Vaccines – The Second Oldest Profession

https://www.henrymakow.com/2021/03/vaccines-the-oldest-scam.html?_ga=2.103290569.871266013.1614184867-903648786.1588285733

Vaccines – The Second Oldest Profession

March 9, 2021
mullins-cover.jpg
In 1988, Eustace Mullins blew the whistle on the vaccine scam. Order the book here.Pfizer and BioNTech Announce Extremely Positive Phase 3 COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Data; Production of 1.3 Billion Doses in 2021 Planned
Pfizer CEO sold $5.6 million in stock on the day of Vaccine Announcement 
Not only do drugmakers make huge profits 
from vaccines, but they continue to profitfrom the illnesses vaccines cause.If vaccines weren’t harmful to health,why would pharmaceutical companies be exempt from liability? This goose has been laying a golden eggfor more than a century, at an indescribable toll in human suffering. Now they want to make vaccinations – not one but regular shots –a condition for participation in society and freedom. And the new vaccines may trigger a fatal over-response on exposure to a virus.“The practice of medicine may not be the world’s oldest profession, but it is often seen to be operating on much the same principles.” Eustace Mullins

Updated from Nov 12, 2020Excerpts from Murder by Injection (1988)by Eustace Mullins(henrymakow.com)

Despite the great power of the hidden rulers, I found that only one group has the power to issue life or death sentences to any American — our nation’s physicians.

I discovered that these physicians, despite their great power, were themselves subjected to very strict controls over every aspect of their professional lives. These controls, surprisingly enough, were not wielded by any state or federal agency, although almost every other aspect of American life is now under the absolute control of the bureaucracy. The physicians have their own autocracy, a private trade association, the American Medical Association. This group, which is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, had gradually built up its power until it assumed total control over medical schools and the accreditation of physicians.
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From its earliest inception [in 1847], the American Medical Association has had one principal objective, attaining and defending a total monopoly of the practice of medicine in the United States. From its outset, the AMA made allopathy the basis of its practice. Allopathy was a type of medicine whose practitioners had received training in a recognized academic school of medicine, and who relied heavily on surgical procedures and the use of medications.


1679-eustace-mullins.jpg(Eustace Mullins 1923-2010)
The practice of immunization goes directly against the discovery of modern holistic medical experts that the body has a natural immune defense against illness. The Church of Modern Medicine claims that we can only be absolved from the peril of infection by the Holy Water of vaccination, injecting into the system a foreign body of infection, which will then perform a Medical Miracle, and will confer life-long immunity, hence the term, “immunization.” 
The greatest heresy any physician can commit is to voice publicly any doubt of any one of the Four Holy Waters, but the most deeply entrenched in modern medical practice is undoubtedly the numerous vaccination programs. They are also the most consistently profitable operations of the Medical Monopoly. Yet one physician, Dr. Henry R. Bybee, of Norfolk, Virginia, has publicly stated, “My honest opinion is that vaccine is the cause of more disease and suffering than anything I could name. I believe that such diseases as cancer, syphilis, cold sores and many other disease conditions are the direct results of vaccination. Yet, in the state of Virginia, and in many other states, parents are compelled to submit their children to this procedure while the medical profession not only receives its pay for this service, but also makes splendid and prospective patients for the future.”  (p.79) —
Another practitioner, Dr. W. B. Clarke of Indiana finds that “Cancer was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination with cowpox vaccine began to be introduced. I have had to deal with a least two hundred cases of cancer, and I never saw a case of cancer in an unvaccinated person.” (p.81)

Another well-known medical practitioner, Dr. J. M. Peebles of San Francisco, has written a book on vaccine, in which he says,
“The vaccination practice, pushed to the front on all occasions by the medical profession through political connivance made compulsory by the state, has not only become the chief menace and the greatest danger to the health of the rising generation, but likewise the crowning outrage upon the personal liberties of the American citizen; compulsory vaccination, poisoning the crimson currents of the human system with brute-extracted lymph under the strange infatuation that it would prevent smallpox, was one of the darkest blots that disfigured the last century.”
Dr. Peebles refers to the fact that the cowpox vaccine was one of the more peculiar “inventions or discoveries of the Age of Enlightenment.” However, as I have pointed out in “The Curse of
Canaan,” the Age of Enlightenment was merely the latest program of the Cult of Baal and its rituals of child sacrifice, which, in one guise or another, has now been with us for some five thousand years. Because of this goal, the Medical Monopoly is also known as “The Society for Crippling Children.”  (p.81-82)
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md-dance.jpg(COVID scam perpetrated by the medical profession) 
However, the peril of even one state legislature foiling their criminal conspiracy caused the Rockefeller Syndicate to concentrate on perfecting an instrument for controlling each and every state legislature in these United States. This was achieved by setting up the Council of State Governments in Chicago. Its ukases are routinely issued to every state legislator, and such is its totalitarian control that not one legislature has ever failed to follow its dictates.
Edward Jenner (1796-1839) “discovered” that cowpox vaccine would supposedly inoculate persons against the eighteenth-century scourge of smallpox. In fact, smallpox was already on the wane, and some authorities believe it would have vanished by the end of the century, due to a number of contributing factors. 
After the use of the cowpox vaccine became widespread in England, a smallpox epidemic broke out which killed 22,081 people. The smallpox epidemics became worse each year that the vaccine was used. In 1872, 44,480 people were killed by it. 
England finally banned the vaccine in 1948, despite the fact that it was one of the most widely heralded “contributions” which that country had made to modern medicine. This action came after many years of compulsory vaccination, during which period those who refused to submit to its dangers were hurried off to jail. (p. 83) —-Polio has increased 700% in states which have compulsory vaccination. The much-quoted writer on medical problems, Morris Beale, who for years edited his informative publication, Capsule News Digest, from Capitol Hill, offered a standing reward during the years from 1954 to 1960 of $30,000, which he would pay to anyone who could prove that the polio vaccine was not a killer and a fraud. There were no takers.
spanish-flu.jpgMedical historians have finally come to the reluctant conclusion that the great flu “epidemic” of 1918 was solely attributable to the widespread use of vaccines. It was the first war in which vaccination was compulsory for all servicemen. The Boston Herald reported that forty-seven soldiers had been killed by vaccination in one month. As a result, the military hospitals were filled, not with wounded combat casualties, but with casualties of the vaccine. The epidemic was called “the Spanish Influenza,” a deliberately misleading appellation, which was intended to conceal its origin. This flu epidemic claimed twenty million victims; those who survived it were the ones who had refused the vaccine. In recent years, annual recurring epidemics of flu are called “the Russian Flu.” For some reason, the Russians never protest, perhaps because the Rockefellers make regular trips to Moscow to lay down the party line.

The perils of vaccination were already known. Plain Talk magazine notes that “during the Franco-Prussian War, every German soldier was vaccinated. The result was that 53,288 otherwise healthy men developed smallpox. The death rate was high.”
In what is now known as “the Great Swine Flu Massacre,” the President of the United States, Gerald Ford, was enlisted to persuade the public to undergo a national vaccination campaign. The moving force behind the scheme was a $135 million windfall profit for the major drug manufacturers. They had a “swine flu” vaccine which suspicious pig raisers had refused to touch, fearful it might wipe out their crop. The manufacturers had only tried to get $80 million from the swine breeders; balked in this sale, they turned to the other market, humans. 
The impetus for the national swine flu vaccine came directly from the Disease Control Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Perhaps coincidentally, Jimmy Carter, a member of the Trilateral Commission, was then planning his presidential campaign in Georgia. The incumbent President, Gerald Ford, had all the advantages of a massive bureaucracy to aid him in his election campaign, while the ineffectual and little known Jimmy Carter offered no serious threat in the election. 
nurse-scam.png(In your face)
Suddenly, out of Atlanta, came the Center of Disease Control plan for a national immunization campaign against “swine flu.” The fact that there was not a single known case of this flu in the United States did not deter the Medical Monopoly from their scheme. The swine breeders had been shocked by the demonstrations of the vaccine on a few pigs, which had collapsed and died. One can imagine the anxious conferences in the headquarters of the great drug firms, until one bright young man remarked, “Well if the swine breeders won’t inject it into their animals, our only other market is to inject it into people.”
The Ford sponsored swine flu campaign almost died an early death, when a conscientious public servant, Dr. Anthony Morris, formerly of HEW and then active as director of the Virus Bureau at the Food and Ding Administration, declared that there could be no authentic swine flu vaccine, because there had never been any cases of swine flu on which they could test it. Dr. Morris then went public with his statement that “at no point were the swine flu vaccines effective.” He was promptly fired, but the damage had been done. (84-85)

News Release Dead Locust Ear-on-a-Chip

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=111d4e0e-d21d-407d-a928-eff3f0b37491&preview=true&m=1111839869613&id=preview

News Release Dead Locust Ear-on-a-Chip
A world first: A robot able to “hear” through the ear of a locust 
Posted on StopTheCrime.net 
INSIDER COMMENT:
It’s all frequency, Deborah, and if you can capture and code the frequency, whole species can be controlled, and they are.

Most people will think it’s biblical, just like floods and tidal waves, which of course we know are caused by “secret” technologies. (ELANA)
After You ReadA robot able to “hear” through the ear of a locust_____________________
Read These two Articles linked at the bottom of this News ReleaseThe Biblical locust plagues of 2020 – BBC Future _________________

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/tu-awf030221.php
A world first: A robot able to “hear” through the ear of a locust2-Mar-2021News Release Tel Aviv University researchers connect a real locust ear to a robotTel-Aviv UniversityResearch News
Credit: Tel Aviv UniversityA technological and biological development that is unprecedented in Israel and the world has been achieved at Tel Aviv University. For the first time, the ear of a dead locust has been connected to a robot that receives the ear’s electrical signals and responds accordingly. The result is extraordinary: When the researchers clap once, the locust’s ear hears the sound and the robot moves forward; when the researchers clap twice, the robot moves backwards.The interdisciplinary study was led by Idan Fishel, a joint master student under the joint supervision of Dr. Ben M. Maoz of the Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering and the Sagol School of Neuroscience, Prof. Yossi Yovel and Prof. Amir Ayali, experts from the School of Zoology and the Sagol School of Neuroscience together with -, Dr. Anton Sheinin, Idan, Yoni Amit, and Neta Shavil. The results of the study were published in the prestigious journal Sensors.The researchers explain that at the beginning of the study, they sought to examine how the advantages of biological systems could be integrated into technological systems, and how the senses of dead locust could be used as sensors for a robot. “We chose the sense of hearing, because it can be easily compared to existing technologies, in contrast to the sense of smell, for example, where the challenge is much greater,” says Dr. Maoz. “Our task was to replace the robot’s electronic microphone with a dead insect’s ear, use the ear’s ability to detect the electrical signals from the environment, in this case vibrations in the air, and, using a special chip, convert the insect input to that of the robot.”To carry out this unique and unconventional task, the interdisciplinary team (Maoz, Yovel and Ayali) faced number of challenged. In the first stage the researchers built a robot capable of responding to signals it receives from the environment. Then, in a multidisciplinary collaboration, the researchers were able to isolate and characterize the dead locust ear and keep it alive, that is, functional, long enough to successfully connect it to the robot. In the final stage, the researchers succeeded in finding a way to pick up the signals received by the locust’s ear in a way that could be used by the robot. At the end of the process, the robot was able to “hear” the sounds and respond accordingly.“Prof. Ayali’s laboratory has extensive experience working with locusts, and they have developed the skills to isolate and characterize the ear,” explains Dr. Maoz. “Prof. Yovel’s laboratory built the robot and developed code that enables the robot to respond to electrical auditory signals. And my laboratory has developed a special device – Ear-on-a-Chip – that allows the ear to be kept alive throughout the experiment by supplying oxygen and food to the organ, while allowing the electrical signals to be taken out of the locust’s ear and amplified and transmitted to the robot.“In general, biological systems have a huge advantage over technological systems – both in terms of sensitivity and in terms of energy consumption. This initiative of Tel Aviv University researchers opens the door to sensory integrations between robots and insects – and may make much more cumbersome and expensive developments in the field of robotics redundant.“It should be understood that biological systems expend negligible energy compared to electronic systems. They are miniature, and therefore also extremely economical and efficient. For the sake of comparison, a laptop consumes about 100 watts per hour, while the human brain consumes about 20 watts a day. Nature is much more advanced than we are, so we should use it. The principle we have demonstrated can be used and applied to other senses, such as smell, sight and touch. For example, some animals have amazing abilities to detect explosives or drugs; the creation of a robot with a biological nose could help us preserve human life and identify criminals in a way that is not possible today. Some animals know how to detect diseases. Others can sense earthquakes. The sky is the limit.”###Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
 Locust Swarm in AfricaEast Africa is seeing its worst swarms of locusts in many decades. … The locust invasion that swept over farms in rural Kenya from December 2019 has left farmers like Ndavu not only counting crop losses, but struggling with emerging environmental and health problems.Aug 7, 2020
The Biblical locust plagues of 2020 – BBC Futurewww.bbc.com › future › article › 20200806-the-biblical-…

Search for: Locust Swarm in Africa

OVER 60 LINKS OF DOCTORS EXPLAINING WHY VACCINES ARE NOT SAFE !


  1. Dr. Nancy Banks – http://bit.ly/1Ip0aIm

  2. Dr. Russell Blaylock – http://bit.ly/1BXxQZL

  3. Dr. Shiv Chopra – http://bit.ly/1gdgh1s

  4. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny – http://bit.ly/1MPVbjx

  5. Dr. Suzanne Humphries – http://bit.ly/17sKDbf

  6. Dr. Larry Palevsky – http://bit.ly/1LLEjf6

  7. Dr. Toni Bark – http://bit.ly/1CYM9RB

  8. Dr. Andrew Wakefield – http://bit.ly/1MuyNzo

  9. Dr. Meryl Nass – http://bit.ly/1DGzJsc

  10. Dr. Raymond Obomsawin – http://bit.ly/1G9ZXYl

  11. Dr. Ghislaine Lanctot – http://bit.ly/1MrVeUL

  12. Dr. Robert Rowen – http://bit.ly/1SIELeF

  13. Dr. David Ayoub – http://bit.ly/1SIELve

  14. Dr. Boyd Haley PhD – http://bit.ly/1KsdVby

  15. Dr. Rashid Buttar – http://bit.ly/1gWOkL6

  16. Dr. Roby Mitchell – http://bit.ly/1gdgEZU

  17. Dr. Ken Stoller – http://bit.ly/1MPVqLI

  18. Dr. Mayer Eisenstein – http://bit.ly/1LLEqHH

  19. Dr. Frank Engley, PhD – http://bit.ly/1OHbLDI

  20. Dr. David Davis – http://bit.ly/1gdgJwo

  21. Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych – http://bit.ly/16Z7k6J

  22. Dr. Harold E Buttram – http://bit.ly/1Kru6Df

  23. Dr. Kelly Brogan – http://bit.ly/1D31pfQ

  24. Dr. RC Tent – http://bit.ly/1MPVwmu

  25. Dr. Rebecca Carley – http://bit.ly/K49F4d

  26. Dr. Andrew Moulden – http://bit.ly/1fwzKJu

  27. Dr. Jack Wolfson – http://bit.ly/1wtPHRA

  28. Dr. Michael Elice – http://bit.ly/1KsdpKA

  29. Dr. Terry Wahls – http://bit.ly/1gWOBhd

  30. Dr. Stephanie Seneff – http://bit.ly/1OtWxAY

  31. Dr. Paul Thomas – http://bit.ly/1DpeXPf

  32. Many doctors talking at once – http://bit.ly/1MPVHOv

  33. Dr. Richard Moskowitz – censored

  34. Dr. Jane Orient – http://bit.ly/1MXX7pb

  35. Dr. Richard Deth – http://bit.ly/1GQDL10

  36. Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic – http://bit.ly/1eqiPr5

  37. Dr Chris Shaw – http://bit.ly/1IlGiBp

  38. Dr. Susan McCreadie – http://bit.ly/1CqqN83

  39. Dr. Mary Ann Block – http://bit.ly/1OHcyUX

  40. Dr. David Brownstein – http://bit.ly/1EaHl9A

  41. Dr. Jayne Donegan – http://bit.ly/1wOk4Zz

  42. Dr. Troy Ross – censored

  43. Dr. Philip Incao – http://bit.ly/1ghE7sS

  44. Dr. Joseph Mercola – http://bit.ly/18dE38I

  45. Dr. Jeff Bradstreet – http://bit.ly/1MaX0cC

  46. Dr. Robert Mendelson – http://bit.ly/1JpAEQr

  47. Dr. Theresa Deisher https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=6Bc6WX33SuE

  48. Dr. Sam Eggertsen-https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8LB-3xkeDAE
    Hundreds more doctors testifying that vaccines aren’t safe or effective, in these documentaries…

  49. Vaccination – The Silent Epidemic – http://bit.ly/1vvQJ2W

  50. The Greater Good – http://bit.ly/1icxh8j

  51. Shots In The Dark – http://bit.ly/1ObtC8h

  52. Vaccination The Hidden Truth – http://bit.ly/KEYDUh

  53. Vaccine Nation – http://bit.ly/1iKNvpU

  54. Vaccination – The Truth About Vaccines – http://bit.ly/1vlpwvU

  55. Lethal Injection – http://bit.ly/1URN7BJ

  56. Bought – http://bit.ly/1M7YSlr

  57. Deadly Immunity – http://bit.ly/1KUg64Z

  58. Autism – Made in the USA – http://bit.ly/1J8WQN5

  59. Beyond Treason – http://bit.ly/1B7kmvt

  60. Trace Amounts – http://bit.ly/1vAH3Hv

  61. Why We Don’t Vaccinate – http://bit.ly/1KbXhuf
    9 hour court case
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DFTsd042M3o
    Documentaries…

  62. Vaccination – The Silent Epidemic(2013)

  1. The Greater Good – (2011)
    https://youtu.be/VxR8XQHc0A0

  2. Shots In The Dark -(2009)
    http://bit.ly/1ObtC8h

  3. Vaccination The Hidden Truth -(1998)
    http://bit.ly/KEYDUh

  4. Vaccine Nation – (2008)
    https://youtu.be/bLk641P8CE4

  5. Vaccination – The Truth About Vaccines –
    http://bit.ly/1vlpwvU

  6. Lethal Injection – http://bit.ly/1URN7BJ

  7. Bought – (2015)
    https://youtu.be/HrgkKREhQrs
    https://youtu.be/_9nre8AMe5I

  8. Deadly Immunity – (2005)
    http://bit.ly/1KUg64Z

  9. Autism – Made in the USA(2009)

  1. Beyond Treason – (2005)
    http://bit.ly/1B7kmvt

  2. Trace Amounts – (2014)
    http://bit.ly/1vAH3Hv

  3. Why We Don’t Vaccinate –
    https://youtu.be/WjiFrTnWiK4

  4. Autism Yesterday – (2010)
    http://bit.ly/1URU2A7
    Dr. Sherri Tenpenny – http://bit.ly/1MPVbjx

Stockton’s Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/stocktons-basic-income-experiment-pays-off/618174/

Two years ago, the city of Stockton, California, did something remarkable: It brought back welfare.

Using donated funds, the industrial city on the edge of the Bay Area tech economy launched a small demonstration program, sending payments of $500 a month to 125 randomly selected individuals living in neighborhoods with average incomes lower than the city median of $46,000 a year. The recipients were allowed to spend the money however they saw fit, and they were not obligated to complete any drug tests, interviews, means or asset tests, or work requirements. They just got the money, no strings attached.  

These kinds of cash transfers are a common, highly effective method of poverty alleviation used all over the world, in low-income and high-income countries, in rural areas and cities, and particularly for households with children. But not in the United States. The U.S. spends less of its GDP on what are known as “family benefits” than any other country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, save Turkey. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program spends less than one-fifth of its budget on direct cash aid, and its funding has been stuck at the same dollar amount since 1996—when the Clinton administration teamed up with congressional Republicans to turn it into a compulsory-work program. Those changes sliced into the safety net, allowing millions of people to fall through.   Most adults without children have no program to help them keep gas in the car and a roof over their head, no matter how poor they are. Most families with kids don’t have one either. In the United States, poverty is used as a cudgel to get people to work. We got rid of welfare for poor families’ and poor individuals’ own good, the argument goes. Give people money, and they stop working. They become dependent on welfare. They never sort out the problems in their life. The best route out of poverty is a hand up, not a handout.   

Stockton has now proved this false. An exclusive new analysis of data from the demonstration project shows that a lack of resources is its own miserable trap. The best way to get people out of poverty is just to get them out of poverty; the best way to offer families more resources is just to offer them more resources.

Derek Thompson: Busting the myth of ‘welfare makes people lazy’

The researchers Stacia Martin-West of the University of Tennessee and Amy Castro Baker of the University of Pennsylvania collected and analyzed data from individuals who received $500 a month and from individuals who did not. Some of their findings are obvious. The cash transfer reduced income volatility, for one: Households getting the cash saw their month-to-month earnings fluctuate 46 percent, versus the control group’s 68 percent. The families receiving the $500 a month tended to spend the money on essentials, including food, home goods, utilities, and gas. (Less than 1 percent went to cigarettes and alcohol.) The cash also doubled the households’ capacity to pay unexpected bills, and allowed recipient families to pay down their debts. Individuals getting the cash were also better able to help their families and friends, providing financial stability to the broader community.  

“It let me pay off some credit cards that I had been living off of, because my household income wasn’t large enough,” one recipient named Laura Kidd-Plummer told me. “It helped me to be able to take care of my groceries without having to run to the food bank three times a month. That was very helpful.” During the study, Laura also experienced a spell of homelessness when the apartment building she was living in had a fire. The Stockton cash helped her secure a new apartment, ensuring that she could afford movers and a security deposit.

The researchers also found that the guaranteed income did not dissuade participants from working—adding to a large body of evidence showing that cash benefits do not dramatically shrink the labor force and in some cases help people work by giving them the stability they need to find and take a new job. In the Stockton study, the share of participants with a full-time job rose 12 percentage points, versus five percentage points in the control group. In an interview, Martin-West and Castro Baker suggested that the money created capacity for goal setting, risk taking, and personal investment.“The big change was how it helped me see myself,” Tomas Vargas, another recipient, told me. “It was dead positive: I am an entrepreneur, I think of business ideas, I make business choices, I want to be financially stable.” When the program started, he worked in logistics. Now, in addition to nurturing his side projects, he is a case manager for individuals on parole.  

Zach Parolin: Welfare money is paying for a lot of things besides welfare

He noted that receiving the money had made him more civically and politically engaged, if also more infuriated at the country’s scorn toward low-income households. “It’s like it’s a big game,” he said. “These people are living with a silver spoon, talking—but how about you walk this life? Have you ever even seen it?”

Finally, the cash recipients were healthier, happier, and less anxious than their counterparts in the control group. “Cash is a better way to cure some forms of depression and anxiety than Prozac,” says Michael Tubbs, a former mayor of Stockton, who spearheaded the project. “So many of the illnesses we see in our community are a result of toxic stress and elevated cortisol levels and anxiety, directly attributed to income volatility and not having enough to cover your basic necessities. That’s true in the public-health crisis we’re in now.”

More work, less destitution, more family stability, less strained social networks, less stress, fewer incidences of homelessness, fewer skipped meals: This is what welfare could give the country.

And it just might. America’s welfare politics have shifted radically of late, in part because of the economic pressures felt by Millennials, the first generation in recent U.S. history likely to end up poorer than their parents. Two once-in-a-lifetime recessions, persistent wage stagnation, wild wealth and income inequality, the student-debt crisis, housing shortages, and a broader cost-of-living crisis have made redistributive policies much more palatable to them—and they’re now the country’s largest voting bloc. The pandemic has shifted U.S. welfare politics too, emphasizing the need for child-care benefits and demonstrating the power of cash as stimulus.

Right now, Democrats are pushing to send low- and middle-income parents $300 a month for each child younger than 6 and $250 a month for children ages 6 to 18 as part of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus-relief package. The program would be temporary, but there is wide support for making it a permanent entitlement. Senator Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, has put forward a proposal to eliminate TANF and replace it with a straightforward child allowance. A number of state, local, and nonprofit efforts are getting going too.

The Stockton demonstration project is ending. But a group Tubbs founded, called Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, is extending the initiative nationwide, with cities from Compton to Gary to Newark making plans to send low-income residents cash.

Mitre Corp – Inside America’s Secretive $2 Billion Research Hub – Collecting Fingerprints From Facebook, Hacking Smartwatches and Fighting Covid-19

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/07/13/inside-americas-secretive-2-billion-research-hub-collecting-fingerprints-from-facebook-hacking-smartwatches-and-fighting-covid-19/?sh=4241fc372052

Mitre Corp. runs some of the U.S. government’s most hush-hush science and tech labs. The cloak-and-dagger R&D shop might just be the most important organization you’ve never heard of.

Thomas Brewster06:30am EDT July 13, 2020


Whether it’s an invisible Aston Martin or an exploding pen, whenever James Bond needs a high-tech edge, he heads right for Q and his secretive MI6 lab. In the real world, American agents often rely on a less clandestine, but far better-funded group. Armed with 8,000 employees and an annual budget of between $1 billion and $2 billion of taxpayers’ money, Mitre Corp., a government-linked Skunk Works, has been making bleeding-edge breakthroughs for U.S. agencies for more than six decades. With its HQ housed in four towers atop a hill in McLean, Virginia, Mitre’s research centers employ some of the nation’s leading computer scientists and engineers to build digital tools for America’s top military, security and intelligence organizations.

Among the government’s wilder Mitre orders: a prototype tool that can hack into smartwatches, fitness trackers and home thermometers for the purposes of homeland security; software to collect human fingerprints from social media websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for the FBI; support in building what the FBI calls the biggest database of human anatomy and criminal history in the world; and a study to determine whether someone’s body odor can show they’re lying.

These varied, multimillion-dollar projects, revealed in hundreds of pages of contract details obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, as well as interviews with former Mitre executives and government officials, provide just a glimpse into this sprawling contractor’s secretive world. Mitre’s influence goes far beyond its vast tech development; it’s also a major consultant for myriad government agencies on how best to deploy tech and policy strategies. Its latest gig: helping the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC) and Homeland Security’s ominously named Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office craft sweeping plans for curtailing the Covid-19 pandemic.

“If there’s a national security or public interest [problem], Mitre probably has a hand in it,” says former Mitre cybersecurity engineer Matt Edman. Bald, bearded and baritone-voiced, Edman could have worked at his pick of hot Silicon Valley tech companies, but instead focused his talents on challenging national security problems. During his time at Mitre, Edman partnered with the FBI, using his hacking skills to help take down the infamous Silk Road dark web drug bazaar. Shortly after he left Mitre, he was allowed to finish the job in October 2013, and was in Reykjavik, Iceland, alongside FBI agent Ilhwan Yum, to shutter the site run by the Dread Pirate Roberts (real name: Ross Ulbricht), who is now serving a life sentence. Edman was also at Mitre when it helped the FBI hack and monitor users of multiple child exploitation sites as part of Operation Torpedo, in what then attorney general Loretta Lynch hailed as a landmark dark web investigation.


“The prospect of law enforcement agencies being able to cheaply, easily and quickly obtain people’s fingerprints off of social media is extraordinarily chilling.”


Mitre’s history is full of such uncredited public service. As its promo material says: “You may not know it, but Mitre touches your life most every day.” Wanting to know the extent of Mitre’s touch, Forbes launched an investigation to pull Mitre’s staggering range of work from the shadows. What we found is an elite institute that has proved a major boon to the U.S. government, providing tools for surveillance of criminals, diseases and immigrants illegally trying to enter the country. But some of the same projects are setting off alarm bells among human rights organizations and privacy advocates like the ACLU, which are concerned about surveillance overreach from Mitre’s sophisticated technology. Despite multiple requests to meet with Mitre executives in person and visit its headquarters, Mitre declined to provide comment for this article. The FBI and DHS acknowledged requests for comment but have not provided any.

Few have heard of Mitre or know its mission, despite its vital importance to the security of the nation. Even locals who live near its large office complex often have no idea it’s been such a stalwart supporter of American national security and defense over the last six decades. “It was just miles away from where I was living and had been there since the mid-50s,” says Shawn Valle, who went to the campus for the first time for a job interview in 2008. “I’d never heard of it.” Valle ended up working on cybersecurity for the Air Force and looking for security issues in Google’s Android operating system during his five years there.

While out of the public eye, Mitre’s history is remarkable. The nonprofit company was born out of the Cold War, spun out of perhaps the world’s most famous tech campus, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (The MIT acronym provides Mitre the first half of its name). In the late 1950s, facing the threat of a Soviet nuclear strike, the U.S. Air Force called on MIT to help it create an air defense system that would help it detect incoming bombers. The institute came up with the Semi-Automated Ground Environment (SAGE). The system combined radar, radio and network communications to detect incoming enemy aircraft, alert and continually update nearby Air Force bases, which would scramble jets to intercept approaching threats. It was the first air defense system of its kind in America, and Mitre was founded by MIT administrators in 1958 to manage SAGE and its future development.


“DHS has asked Mitre to help build an enduring national capability to contain Covid-19.”


Over the next 40 years, Mitre was behind the scenes of now-famous air surveillance technologies such as the Airborne Warning and Communications Systems (AWACS) and the Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (STARS). It also played a significant role in the development of much-used tech like GPS and the commercial airline Traffic Collision Avoidance System. Today its remit is even wider, leading all manner of cybersecurity initiatives and healthcare projects, while sticking to its core role of protecting national security.

“The characteristic of Mitre that I’ve always explained to people is that when we say we do information sciences, we go way beyond what people would typically call IT,” Martin Faga, the Mitre CEO from 2000 to 2006, tells Forbes. It would, for example, design a specialized antenna to go on military aircraft to send and receive data from a communication satellite, says Faga, a white-haired, suitably inconspicuous longtime employee of U.S. intelligence agencies and contractors. Mitre would then design the satellite communications system, too, as well as the radar—basically “every kind of information system,” he adds.

Its broad expertise is now being employed to help yank America out of its Covid-19 crisis. In a $16.3 million contract signed with the CDC in late June, Mitre was asked to help build “an enduring national capability to contain Covid-19.” The CDC, which spent $20 million with Mitre on disease surveillance tech and services in 2019, hadn’t responded to Forbes’ requests for more detail on those pandemic plans. Meanwhile, on March 17, four days into the national emergency caused by Covid-19, the DHS Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) office called on Mitre to effectively act as a fulcrum of a pandemic response plan, to “engage, inform and guide” mayors, governors and emergency response leaders dealing with a pandemic. Mitre would also create disease models to track a pandemic and determine what “nonpharmaceutical interventions” (a.k.a. NPIs—think closing schools, stores and implementing social distancing) could help lawmakers “bend the curve.”

Mitre’s Moola


Government data shows taxpayer dollars directed to Mitre have been rising in recent years, heading toward $2 billion. Mitre says its overall revenue for 2019 was $1.8 billion.

The $200,000 contract (microscopic by Covid spending standards) states: “As the pandemic progresses, the contractor will identify, collect and analyze data to enable near real-time learning to state and local leaders for the eventual appropriate retrograde of NPI implementation efforts.” In other words, Mitre is helping America’s leaders decide when and how to open up again. (Neither Mitre nor the DHS explained why the CWMD unit was managing such a contract.) And pro bono, Mitre has created a contact tracing system called Sara Alert that’s been helping various states—Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Vermont, to name a few—monitor outbreaks. The system lets people known to be at risk of Covid-19 infection to upload their symptoms and temperature to their state and local health bodies’ databases. In Arkansas, 12,861 have enrolled since early April, updating the health department via text, call, email or website on their condition. “This system allows us to more readily identify secondary cases, really establishing a better handle on social clusters, which has been a challenge,” says Dr. Mike Cima, chief epidemiologist at the Arkansas Department of Health. It’s been so successful, Cima plans to carry on using Sara Alert for other infectious diseases beyond Covid-19’s eventual demise.

Mitre differs from other military and intelligence contractors in that it has no mandate to make any money. Unlike commercial contractors like Northrup Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics, it runs seven of those Skunk Works, known in the industry as “federally funded research and development centers” (FFDRCs), a mundane name belying their influential work. Mitre only charges for employees’ time, with a small fee, usually around 3% of the overall cost, that supports further independent research, says Faga. “People come forward with a great idea and say, ‘Gee, if I had $100,000, I could turn this into something great.’ And the company can give it to them.”

This put the former CEO in an unusual position among his Beltway rivals. “I’d go to the annual meeting of the board. I go to my report and say, ‘We worked hard this year. And we broke even.’ And they’d all cheer. Any other CEO would hear, ‘You’re fired!’”

Mitre doesn’t commercialize the technology it creates. Once a prototype is built, it’s licensed to either the government, private business or academic institutions. Since 2014, it’s transferred more than 670 licenses to industry and university partners.

Unshackled from commercial pressures, Mitre’s given latitude to develop some of the more radical answers to the government’s most pressing questions. Take a project to collect fingerprints from peoples’ Facebook, Twitter and other social media posts. Emails and details of a Mitre contract obtained by Forbes outline a $500,000 “social media image fingerprinting project” for the FBI, which started in 2015. It was run by an FBI hacking unit in Quantico, the Operational Technology Division, and funded by a previously unreported research funding body called Triad. Chris Piehota, the recently retired chief that Triad was designed to fund innovative research from objective outside bodies and that “image fingerprinting” is as literal as it sounds: trying to capture biometric information from social media images. Think of gang members who put up photos of themselves online, making gang signs with their hands, explains Piehota. “They’re also giving us access to their fingerprint patterns,” he adds. “[The FBI] can take your fingerprint characteristics from those images and they can build fingerprint files or fingerprint characteristics for individuals [for whom] we don’t have biographic information.” This could be useful for individuals violating immigration laws where the U.S. doesn’t have a record of their fingerprints in another database, adds Piehota. It could also be used to identify someone in a child exploitation video or, as in an investigation in the Welsh city of Swansea, catch drug dealers using tools like WhatsApp.


“Think of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and a surveillance tool that can detect smartwatches and hack them.”


The technology, if it works as described, is potentially useful for the law enforcement and intel agencies Mitre works with, and potentially dangerous for personal privacy. Nate Wessler, staff attorney at the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, says the surveillance project raises “serious privacy concerns,” especially during a time of pan-American civil unrest over the Covid-19 pandemic and racial inequality. “Nobody expects that by posting a digital photo online, they are exposing their unique biometric identifiers including their fingerprints, to collection in a law enforcement database,” he says. “Not only are we seeing historic protests against anti-Black racism and police brutality, but we’re also seeing historic levels of digital recordings of those photos of those protesters by the media and by law enforcement. . . . The prospect of law enforcement agencies being able to cheaply, easily and quickly obtain people’s fingerprints off of those photos is extraordinarily chilling.” Piehota notes that as a privacy precaution the FBI would only take fingerprints from social media images where the target was a valid suspect and it wouldn’t simply trawl the likes of Facebook for all available prints.

Mitre has a history in assisting the U.S. government’s expansion of biometric surveillance. Another 2014 contract details Mitre’s work assisting the FBI on facial recognition tools, right down to “creating local watch lists by flagging subjects of interest.” It’s also helping the FBI build the Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which is one of the biggest databases of criminal suspects’ faces, fingerprints and other identifying body parts on the planet. According to the FBI, the NGI is “the world’s largest and most efficient electronic repository of biometric and criminal history information.” It’s cost the FBI at least $500 million since its incipience in 2007, much of it going to early developer Lockheed Martin, according to a review of contract records. Piehota says that all manner of law enforcement agencies, from local to federal, can access it to check the identity and background of a criminal. And Mitre, since at least 2013, has received millions in contracts to provide technology and guidance to build it as part of a previously unreported project called “Sugar Bowl II,” an unexplained code name, FOIA records show.

Mitre’s high-tech snooping also extends to the fast-growing world of connected devices: Think smartwatches, speakers, TVs and security cameras. In a $500,000 September 2017 contract, the DHS asked Mitre to create a system that could locate and hack into smartwatches, fitness trackers, home automation devices or anything that could be classed as an Internet of Things (IoT) system. The contract says the tech could be used either by law enforcement or border officials to help them “rapidly detect and exploit for evidentiary purposes IoT devices in a security or crime scene environment,” or for use at “physical security boundaries” to hack into devices “passing through or approaching the boundary.” Think of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and a surveillance tool that scans every device coming through, checking which ones are smartwatches or other IoT systems. When one is worn by a criminal suspect, it could quickly be drained of data and evidence of their activities gathered, from their text messages to their previous locations.

One source, a former police officer and surveillance industry expert who claimed knowledge of the contract, says the tech was only ever used by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Another source, a former Mitre and government employee, says Mitre has long provided digital forensics expertise to CBP staff carrying out searches of electronic devices at the border. And FOIA-obtained contracts worth more than $13 million show Mitre has provided expansive CBP technical support since at least 2016, including a study of the efficacy of Rapid DNA technology—another controversial tool that’s led to an outcry among civil rights organizations, who say the tools infringe on immigrants’ privacy. Designed to help uncover immigrants lying about being related to each other at the border, it can quickly determine whether people entering the U.S. are related. As the government cannot legally detain migrant children for longer than 20 days, they’re typically released before an immigration court hearing and ICE has claimed this is being used as a loophole to smuggle children into the country.

The power to hack into smart IoT devices could be hugely advantageous for federal agents, though the government wouldn’t tell Forbes where or how it’s been deployed. As explained in the September 2017 project outline, police have been lacking in the skills and resources to acquire evidence from these kinds of technologies. “IoT devices capture a lot of telemetry and I can imagine lots of places where this is useful,” says Jake Williams, a former NSA analyst turned cybersecurity practitioner, who adds that he was shocked that such a tool would be used at border checkpoints. It’s got civil rights lawyers spooked too. “It would appear to only require the person using the tools to be in range of the device signals and would not require physical possession or access,” says Jerome Greco, a public defender in the Digital Forensics Unit of the Legal Aid Society. “Law enforcement use would be troubling, and it would be difficult to hold them accountable for how they use it.”

Mitre isn’t just helping the government interrogate tech; it’s done some work on human interrogation, too. Going back to 2009, the year when the Homeland Security-funded Mitre lab—the Homeland Security Systems Engineering and Development Institute—was founded, some more left-field work was being undertaken in a study dubbed “Human Odor as a Biometric for Deception.” In research reminiscent of the left-field projects more often associated with the CIA, Homeland Security set out to see whether there was any scientific basis to the saying “I think I smell a rat.” Its aim was to investigate the possibility of using the “human odor signature” as an “indicator for deception.” Samples were taken from volunteers before and after they committed or didn’t commit some deceptive act to see whether or not there was a difference. They also wanted to find evidence to “support the hypothesis that an individual’s odor signature can serve as a biometric identifier.” The essential question was: Do you have an odor that is entirely unique to you when you lie? Yes, was the answer, according to Homeland Security, which hadn’t responded to other inquiries about Mitre’s operations. In the executive summary of their final report in 2011, the authors said the “results indicate that measurable variations in human odor do seem to permit differentiating between deceptive and nondeceptive individuals.”

This may be an example of Mitre’s more outré research, much of which remains stored in the vaults of those McLean towers or locked up under classified seals in government servers. But such is its standing, even when the value of the work is doubted, Mitre’s name is enough for it to be taken seriously within the halls of government. Faga, the former CEO who remains on an advisory board at Mitre, recalls a recent trip to the Pentagon, where a meeting had been called to discuss worrying vulnerabilities in GPS. A delegate anxious to know just how worried they should be about the security weaknesses asked where the Pentagon got the information. When an official said Mitre, the atmosphere in the room changed, says Faga. Everyone, adds Faga, concluded, “Okay, well, then it’s real.”

‘I can’t buy food’: As Cuba’s economy worsens, desperate rafters risk their lives at sea

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/i-cant-buy-food-as-cubas-economy-worsens-desperate-rafters-risk-their-lives-at-sea/ar-BB1e0CqL

‘I can’t buy food’: As Cuba’s economy worsens, desperate rafters risk their lives at sea

Feb. 25, 2021—Marisol Monteagudo’s son gave her a kiss goodbye as he headed out the door to spend a night out with friends in Cuba’s Isla de la Juventud.

What he didn’t tell her: That instead of grabbing a drink or watching a movie, they were planning to board a flimsy raft en route to Mexico.

That was three months ago. She hasn’t heard from him since.

“Only a mother can understand this pain,” Monteagudo, 62, said. “I know my son is alive. I just hope someone helps me find him.”

In recent months, U.S. Coast Guard officials have detected a new uptick in Cuban rafters, with the number intercepted at sea in the fiscal year that started in October already surpassing the total for the previous 12 months.

Though still vastly lower than previous surges, the recent increase has sparked concern that as economic and humanitarian conditions in Cuba worsen, more will risk their lives at sea. U.S. President Joe Biden’s proposal to transform the immigration system is also believed to be a driving factor.

“It’s a combination of the rising desperation of a good part of the Cuban population over deteriorating life conditions, as well as the illusion of getting to the United States under a president who is more tolerant of undocumented immigrants,” said Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

According to U.S. Coast Guard figures, more than 100 Cubans have been caught at sea in the last five months, compared to 49 in all of the 2020 fiscal year.

Those rescued in recent weeks include three Cubans stranded on an island in the Bahamas for 33 days, surviving off of coconuts, rats, conch and snails. On Tuesday, authorities announced they’d rescued six men and two pregnant women aboard a raft made of Styrofoam and metal rods and apparently powered by a car engine.

“I threw myself into the sea because it’s not possible to live like this anymore,” said Beatriz, 28, who the Coast Guard found on a raft near Key West in January. “There’s nothing in the stores and with what I earn, I can’t buy food for my daughters.”

The mother of two daughters said she boarded a raft with eight neighbors after receiving a WhatsApp message indicating the new U.S. president would allow Cubans to enter.

After being returned, Cuban authorities told her she’d be fined 10,000 pesos — the equivalent of $416 — if she tried to flee again, said Beatriz, who asked only to be identified by her first name for fear of reprisal. On a recent afternoon, she said state security officials showed up to ask the neighborhood “Revolutionary Defense Committee” about her behavior.

“It’s as bad here as it has ever been,” she said.

Cuba is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The nation’s GDP contracted 11% last year as the nation closed its borders to international travelers and tourism plummeted as a result of the pandemic. New economic reforms designed to boost the ailing economy have increased inflation. Many Cubans now wait in long lines to buy increasingly sparse supplies of basic goods like food.

Ramón Saúl Sánchez, a Cuban exile who for decades has helped the “balseros,” described the current situation as “an exodus in slow motion that each day is more visible.”

He said Coast Guard figures don’t convey the full magnitude of the situation, since those who arrive go undetected, living as undocumented residents.

In 2017, the Obama administration ended the so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy granting residency to Cubans who reached U.S. soil. The vast majority of those caught at sea are now returned, except those who can prove a well-founded fear of persecution.

“Those who reach land hide like any other undocumented migrant,” Sánchez said. “What is happening should send an alarm signal about Cuba’s situation.”

Duany said that “for the moment” he doesn’t expect to see a rise like that seen in 1994, when 35,000 people fled after Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave could go, or in the lead-up to the end of “wet foot, dry foot.”

“The regime in Havana probably wouldn’t allow the flight of thousands of people without U.S. visas,” he said. “And Washington wouldn’t accept their arrival.”

For Monteagudo, the long days since her 32-year-old son’s departure have been marked by worry and futile efforts to locate her son, Yerandy Paz. His girlfriend has written to U.S. and Cuban authorities asking for their help in finding him.

“A mother will always wait,” Monteagudo said. “Gold and dollars are are worth nothing if you don’t have family and life.”

ANAL SWAB TESTS

ANAL SWAB TESTS  

American diplomats in China complain 

they were “forced” to take anal swab tests 

for coronavirus  

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9298587/China-denies-requiring-U-S-diplomats-anal-swab-tests.html

American diplomats in China complain they were forced to take anal swab tests for coronavirus

February 25, 2021

American diplomats in China have claimed they were forced to take anal swab tests for coronavirus.

Washington complained the procedure was ‘undignified’ and told staff to decline the test if asked to take one.

Beijing has since claimed the test, mandatory for incoming travellers in some parts of China, was given ‘in error’, as diplomatic personnel were exempt. 

However, China today denied any knowledge of carrying out anal swab tests on US diplomats. 

To collect test samples, the swab needs to be inserted about three to five centimetres (1.2 to 2 inches) into the rectum and rotated several times.

After completing the motion twice, the swab is removed before being securely placed inside a sample container. The whole procedure is said to take about 10 seconds.

The Chinese capital began using the derriere detecting method more frequently during a mass testing drive after a nine-year-old boy tested positive for the virus last month.

Within a matter of days in January, more than three million residents in three Beijing districts have received coronavirus testing in a bid to stem the contagion, authorities said.

A US source told Vice of the claims: ‘The State Department never agreed to this kind of testing and protested directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when we learned that some staff were subject to it.’

Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a daily news briefing in the Chinese capital: ‘To my knowledge…China has never required U.S. diplomatic staff stationed in China to conduct anal swab tests.’

A State Department representative said it was ‘committed to guaranteeing the safety and security of American diplomats and their families, while preserving their dignity’.

Anal swabs have been used in China to test coronavirus since last year, but the method is mainly used in key groups at quarantine centres because of its inconvenience, according to a Chinese disease control expert. 

Some Chinese cities used samples taken from the anus to detect potential infections amid stepped-up screening during a spate of regional outbreaks ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays.

A medical worker collects a swab in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China, earlier this week

Tests using anal swabs can avoid missing infections as virus traces in faecal samples or anal swabs could remain detectable for a longer time than in those from the respiratory tract, Li Tongzeng, a respiratory diseases doctor in Beijing, told state television last month.

Stool tests may also be more effective in finding infections in children and infants as their waste carries a higher viral load than adults, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said in a paper published last year.

But the accuracy and efficiency of anal swabs remain controversial among experts.

Yang Zhanqiu, a deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told state media Global Times that the nasal and throat swabs remain the most efficient test as the virus is proven to be contracted via one’s upper respiratory tract rather than the digestive system.

‘There have been cases concerning the coronavirus testing positive in a patient’s excrement, but no evidence has suggested it had been transmitted through one’s digestive system,’ Yang said.

Exclusive: White House preparing order for enhanced airport screenings for Ebola

https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-white-house-preparing-order-for-enhanced-airport-screenings-for-ebola-203354978.html

WHO – reports Death Rates in a cluster of Ebola cases in Guinea 

to be 5 DEATHS Out of 7 Reported Cases

WHAT ARE YOUR ODDS of SURVIVAL?

DO ALL YOU CAN ‘NOW’ to IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH to be HARDER to KILL

Posted on StopTheCrime.net

In a cluster of Ebola cases in Guinea. Out of seven reported cases, five people died;

White House orders enhanced airport screenings for Ebola

Nick TurseFri, February 26, 2021, 12:33 PM

The Biden administration is moving forward with plans to screen airline passengers from two African countries arriving in the U.S. for Ebola, which will involve sending them to one of about a half dozen designated airports.

The Centers for Disease Control confirmed the plan Friday evening, several hours after Yahoo News first reported that administration officials were finalizing details of how the screenings would work. “Out of an abundance of caution,” the U.S. government will institute public health measures for the very small number of travelers arriving from the [Democratic Republic of Congo] and Guinea,” the CDC said in a statement.

The U.S. government will, under the plan, send passengers from those countries to six airports where data will be collected for contact tracing and they will undergo basic health screenings.  

The precise details of the screenings were still under discussion at the White House and National Security Council  on Friday afternoon shortly. The changes will to into effect next week, according to the CDC.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Feb. 17, 2021 the World Health Organization reported a cluster of Ebola cases in Guinea. Out of seven reported cases, five people died; the other two are in isolation in dedicated health care facilities. The specific Ebolavirus species is not yet determined, the WHO reported at the time. As of Feb. 15, 192 contacts had been identified.

The WHO “considers the risk of spread in the country as very high given the unknown size, duration and origin of the outbreak; potentially large number of contacts; potential spread to other parts of Guinea and neighboring countries; limited response capacity currently on the ground; and unknown virus strain,” according to a bulletin circulated to U.S. government agencies on Feb. 18.

All six nations bordering Guinea are finalizing their national preparedness and readiness operational plans, according to the WHO. The overall state of readiness in the six countries, according to a WHO readiness assessment tool, is nearly 66 percent, which is still lower than the benchmark of 80 percent.

“We’ve learned the hard lessons of history, and we know with Ebola and other health emergencies, preparedness works. It’s act now or pay later in lives lost and economies ruined. Systematic surveillance, comprehensive preparations and strong, cross-border coordination are crucial to detecting any cases and ensuring that they are quickly isolated, treated and that vaccination of high-risk contacts begin quickly,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa.

A separate WHO alert, sent out on Feb. 11, detailed reports of Ebola outbreaks in Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 2017 there have been five outbreaks in Congo, including one that raged from 2018 to 2020, causing nearly 2,300 deaths. The current outbreak is occurring in the same region.

The news comes less than six months after the previous U.S. administration ended similar measures for COVID-19, deeming them to be of little use in controlling the spread of the virus. Before the reversal, international passengers were funneled through 15 airports and went through basic health screenings, including a temperature check.

Since Ebola viruses were first identified in 1976, more than 20 known outbreaks of the disease have been identified in sub-Saharan Africa, including in Sudan, Uganda and Gabon. The 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa was the largest, resulting in more than 28,000 cases and more than 11,000 deaths — a case fatality rate of about 63 percent.