Democratic Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan delivered his state-of-the-county address earlier this week. He spoke with WAMC’s Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Allison Dunne about the start of a basic income pilot program as well as initiatives under his Green New Deal.
Ryan’s THE address included two main themes.
“The first is building on all the resilience work that we did in the county with food delivery, childcare support, rent support, small business support, to add a new and really pretty innovative addition to that, which is a pilot program of universal basic income, essentially providing direct cash relief to families in Ulster County, as they try to get, you know, work their way out of the economic stress and challenges of the pandemic. So we’re really excited about that one,” Ryan says. “And I think, not only will it have a direct impact for the 100 families that will participate in, in the program, but it will also add to this growing body of research and work nationally in terms of figuring out the potential for universal basic income to help potentially millions of people around the country.”
“Is there the potential to expand this after the year is over?” asks Dunne.
“I hope that, one, I hope that our theory is right that this is a great and effective model. And, if it is, the idea would be how can we at the county level expand it. Ultimately, to do something at scale like this, it would, I think, need to be a state and/or a federal program. But our hope is as, as now the first county in the country to do this at the county level, we can add to the research and the proof points there,” says Ryan. “And I hope that in the coming years, this is something that that grows and continues to help people.”
“And correct me if I’m wrong, this is based on the community donations, just like project resilience, right? This is not going to be taxpayer funded,” says Dunne.
“Exactly. That’s an important part. I mean, given all the economic challenges, we were excited to be able to do this in a way that doesn’t add to the taxpayer burden, but still provides this relief, and it reinvest all these generous community donations right back into our community here, which is very cool,” Ryan says. “I’ve already heard from, from several folks. One, one woman actually live-watching the state of the county address commented, I’m a single mother, this $500 a month would be life-changing for my family and I, and the hope is that that can be replicated for, for many others both in this program and, eventually, hopefully for more.”
Residents who want to participate in the program and receive direct relief payments of $500 a month for one year must have an annual income of $46,900 or below.
“So we’ve been really thoughtful about doing this in the right ways, both in terms of fairness, but also in terms of academic rigor. We’re partnering with the nation-leading research institution on this, that’s the University of Pennsylvania, the Center for Guaranteed Income. So they’ve done this in 20-plus cities around the country already, and they will actually be doing a random selection of all those that apply to ensure that it’s really a totally fair and impartial process,” Ryan says. “And, and that also will help, again, feed what we learn on the ground here in Ulster County into the broader national dialogue about how to do this and how to do it in the right ways.”
Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley and Ulster Savings Bank are also partners in the program. In Columbia County, former presidential candidate and now New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang joined with Hudson Mayor Kamal Johnson to launch a Universal Basic Income pilot program in the city last year.
Ryan’s second theme during his pre-recorded Facebook address Tuesday was expanding a Green New Deal for Ulster County. During his first week in office in 2019, Ryan signed an Executive Order committing to transitioning county operations to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. Since, he launched a Green Careers Academy in partnership with SUNY Ulster. This year, the county will expand the Academy by bringing on new partners including Ulster BOCES, Bard College, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Central Hudson, Citizens for Local Power, Habitat for Humanity, the Climate Reality Project and several local labor unions to help train residents and put them on a path to good-paying green jobs. And he announced this week the Ulster County Green Business Champions program, a public-private partnership to more aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Twenty percent of our greenhouse gas emissions come from the private sector. And the idea here is to both reward and recognize those that are already doing this work and to provide financial support and other support to businesses that want to make these investments,” Ryan says. “So for example, rooftop solar on your business, we can help finance that and actually save your business money and help protect the environment. And there are a whole menu of those sorts of things that we’re excited to help our businesses with.”
On Wednesday, Ryan and the county comptroller released 2020 sales-tax revenue figures.
“I’d say, in a relative sense, pretty good news,” says Ryan. “We were, we came in a little over $1 million under our forecasted sales-tax revenue but much better than we sort of expected at the worst of the pandemic when we were seeing 20, 30 percent drop-offs in economic activity and sales tax.”
He says it appears economic recovery efforts worked on the local level, as did putting federal stimulus checks into the hands of residents.
“And, by the way, that’s exactly ties back to the thinking on universal basic income that getting money into people’s pockets, especially in a time of crisis, not only helps them but it, but it helps our broader economy,” Ryan says,
Through September 2020, the county’s sales tax numbers were down 7.8 percent, or $5.8 million. However, the county regained ground from October 2020 through February 2021, with an increase of 11.37 percent or $5.9 million.
San Antonio is the latest city to adopt the innovation zone model as it seeks to test new civic technology, joining Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas and others.
Phil Goldstein is the web editor for FedTech and StateTech. Besides keeping up with the latest in technology trends, he is also an avid lover of the New York Yankees, poetry, photography, traveling and escaping humidity.
San Antonio may not have the size and clout of its fellow Texas cities Dallas and Houston, but it is still the 24th-largest metropolitan area in the country. And when it comes to civic technology deployments, it is making moves.
In June 2018, the San Antonio City Council was briefed on plans to create three “innovation zones,” as part of its Smart SA initiative, the San Antonio Express-News reports. Although the city has not formally moved forward on the innovation zone deployments, the proposed zones indicate that Alamo City is getting more serious about ramping up its smart city efforts.
Innovation zones are areas within cities that municipalities use as proving grounds for smart city technology deployments, small areas to test everything from smart streetlights to IP-connected surveillance cameras and environmental sensors. Once the technologies are provenat a small scale, cities can then make a case to expand them on a wider basis. Other cities, including Denver, Las Vegas and Kansas City, Mo., have undertaken similar efforts in recent years.
“We see the innovation zones as a real-world proving ground for the pilot smart city technology that we’re testing,” Jose De La Cruz, chief innovation officer of San Antonio, said at the council meeting, according to StateScoop. “The zones are really the next phase in our overall smart city strategy.”
San Antonio Plans Innovation Zones as Part of Smart City Strategy
In April, the City Council’s Innovation and Technology Committee recommended placing innovation zones in two areas: South Texas Medical Center and Brooks, a 1,308-acre mixed-use community in the city’s southeast quadrant. In June, De La Cruz added in downtown San Antonio as a third area.
The three areas were selected because the city hopes to use innovative technologies to address challenges in each. Additionally, De La Cruz said that the three areas were chosen because they have existing fiber-optic cables, which can serve as backhaul to the internet for wireless and Internet of Things technologies, according to the Express-News.
Brooks is a former U.S. Air Force base slated for “live-work-play” development, according to the Rivard Report, and the city listed public Wi-Fi, innovative drainage systems, logistics and public transportation as opportunities that technology could address.
Meanwhile, according to the Rivard Report, the medical center “would serve as a laboratory for new transportation projects aimed at combating traffic congestion, parking issues, and pedestrian accidents, among others.”
De La Cruz said that the downtown area will test innovative lighting solutions and IoT solutions to parking accessibility and enforcement.
What comes next? The Express-News reports:
As the innovation zones ramp up, the city will hold a vendor summit where officials will lay out local challenges and invite companies to propose smart solutions. Eventually, the city will seek sealed proposals and then best-and-final offers from shortlisted groups over the course of the next several months.
Cities Promote Innovation Districts to Improve City Infrastructure
Other cities have adopted the innovation zone model.
“The Innovation District is meant to be the home of new transportation infrastructure and mobility technologies, allowing for the creation of partnerships with autonomous vehicle/mobility companies and with smart city technology firms,” the city says on its website.
Las Vegas has partnered with Cisco Systems to get access to its analytics tools to collect data about traffic movement, water use, pedestrian activity, waste, lighting and other environmental factors, according to a press release.
Since November 2017, Las Vegas has operated an all-electric minibus, billed as the first autonomous public transportation to be launched on U.S. roads, thanks to the collaboration between the City of Las Vegas, the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada and the Keolis transportation management company. As of May, the shuttle has transported more than 25,000 riders, Christopher Barker, vice president of new mobility, communications and marketing at Keolis tells the website Skift, a number he says is “ahead of what we forecasted.”
In Denver, about a 20-minute light-rail trip northeast from downtown and sitting on the edge of Denver International Airport, the city is developing a mixed-used area known as Peña Station Next, with hotels, commercial and residential development.
The city envisions that the area will include 1.5 million square feet of office space, 500,000 square feet of retail space and 2,500 residences, while also serving as a test bed for smart city technology. One of the development’s buildings has been completed: the gleaming, solar-powered, 112,500-square-foot edifice that houses Panasonic Enterprise Solutions’ operations and technology center.
In the streets, workers are installing wirelessly controlled LED streetlights, which the complex’s backers say in a press release will deliver 70 percent energy savings over conventional lampposts.
And in Kansas City, the city is moving forward with its Smart City Initiative, and also plans to expand its KC Streetcar, a 2-year-old transit system that wends its way through parts of downtown Kansas City.
The KC Streetcar has served as “a laboratory” of sorts deploying smart city, Kansas City CIO Bob Bennett told StateTech in a previous interview. The city has partnered with Cisco as a strategic partner on the project.
And as StateTech reported:
Kansas City’s Smart City corridor is a $15.7 million public-private partnership offering free public Wi-Fi, smart streetlights and sensors along the KC Streetcar’s 2-mile-long route. The city embedded technology supporting these capabilities along the streetcar route, often mounting cameras, sensors and Wi-Fi hubs on lampposts and elsewhere.
Here is my latest paper that may be of interest to you. I’ve combed the scientific & medical literature and brought together the evidence for a link between wireless radiation & COVID-19. My paper is posted on a pre-print server here, where you can read it online or download it:
I am not saying that COVID is merely wireless radiation exposure effects. I do think that there is also a virus. My view is that exposure to wireless causes adverse health effects that are similar to COVID and exacerbates the disease. Wireless is an environmental hazard & co-factor in COVID. There should be a global moratorium on 5G infrastructure at this time!
What innocent citizens can do if their killing permits become legal under an international agreement to use humans as a renewable resource for the production of nuclear energy
· It is targeting individuals and converting them to semi-mechanical men through implanted psychotronic microchips, which open channels directly between the human brain and external electronic devices and target the electromagnetic energy of humans using high radiation like gamma radiation, ionic and electronic accelerators for radioisotopes enrichment production of uranium, thorium, radium, radon, plutonium, etc. Human waste containing radioactive isotopes is “mined” from sewage for nuclear energy production.
· This program has been applied to billions of people around the world since 1974, all of whom are RNM (remote neural monitoring) monitored and controlled by satellite, mobile, computer, Internet, TV, even to changing their behavior to violence through electronic chips to increase energy production.
Nuclear Program methods for communicating with implanted
psychotronic microchips
1. Air condition magnetic fields spread the smart dust and radioactive contamination such as uranium, radon and polonium for human body infection and enrichment process
2. Radio frequency signals, electrical conduction & modulated sound signals created by the Internet, mobile, computer & TV
3. Water taps and food
4.Drugs that use electronic microchips
5. Addiction to social media, especially Facebook, video games & TV to force people to use the Internet & TV as long as possible while human electronic energy is being mined, which covers 10% of the electricity consumption in the world
6. Geoengineered nuclear energy changes natural phenomena to artificial rain, snow & storms to convert methane gas to carbon gas, then to graphite and DIAMOND
7. Psychotronic microchips for artificial telepathy, brain manipulation & RNM and DNA reprogramming since the DNA is responsible for building the human body, data storage & communications
8. Smart Dust: MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems) such as sensors, robots or other devices that can detect, for example, light, temperature, vibration, magnetism, chemicals, etc. They are released in space as well as the vicinity of a target and are run on a computer network
9. Chemical and physical parameters of water that implanted in toilets for radioactive waste measurement
Damage and Symptoms of Nuclear Program-Targeted Individuals
THE FIRST PHASE
1. Peripheral nerve inflammation, red, black or red spots, scabies, body aches, exhaustion or lack of desire, chest tightness, choking cry, irregular monthly period for women, lack of desire for life or feeling suicidal, spoil your relationship with your family, friends & work, leaving your religion, tiredness in the joints, forgetfulness, frequent headaches, hair loss, lack of compatibility with life.
2. Addiction to social media, video games & TV to ensure that people interact with the program for the longest period
3. Mind control via satellite, computer, mobile, Internet and TV
4. Eyes may be used as a camera to photograph and monitor daily life without the target’s knowledge
5. Autism, stuttering, artificial tinnitus “ringing in the ear,” microwave hearing, ringing fence issued from the lamp, TV or other electronic devices in the presence of the target at home as a result of the target’s mind interaction with electronic devices, to ensure the target’s attention and interaction and produce electronic energy as well as symptoms of injury: sudden shock, electric shock, and memory impairment.
6. Artificial telepathy
THE SECOND PHASE
1. The stress increase due to exposure to high radiation like gamma, ionic and electronic accelerators 24 hours a day, inability to sleep, isolation, etc. Most targets try to commit suicide, especially when they have no awareness of the technology virtual apps “hypnosis, sense of vibration, touching and forced waking visions” subjecting the target to mental illness and losing the right to defend themselves.
2. Headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, leukemia and hair loss. Radiation has a significant effect on the bone marrow and so causes white blood cell deficiency. It also causes cataracts, which damage the eye and cause blindness, leading to shortness of life. Radiation has a significant effect on the sex glands of men and women, and the exposure of pregnant women may cause fetal death or deformed birth
3. Forced manipulation of the respiratory tract, inhalation of strange odors, rapid heart rate, sensation of skin injection effect, constriction of ribs, dryness and decomposition of the skin due to exposure to microwave radiation
4. General effects: sudden overheating, whole body pain, sleep prevention, irresistible “go here go there commands”, microwaves burns, electric shock sensations, as the goal of the program is to subject the target to isolation, frustration and body pain to ensure their interaction with the program so as to produce more electronic energy
5. Chronic diseases: cancer, tinnitus, pneumonia, autism, joint and back pain, peripheral neuropathies, severe depression, suicide or criminal acts, harassment, chronic headache, impaired sexual ability, OCD, deviation of tendencies, Alzheimer’s. Note that the human will show these symptoms but not all, based on their immunity and psychological disposition.
The most effective tactics that heal & free targets
1. You must believe that you are stronger than any external forces that want to take control of your life and your health and violate your human rights in order to produce energy and obtain world hegemony and billions dollars from these illegal investments, Therefore, the following methods of resistance should be followed to prevent ourselves from becoming sources of energy production. Many people have been released when the electronic stalking failed to steal their energy. Keep in mind that when there is NO RETURN ON INVESTMENT—the lack of access to energy from the human—the nuclear energy establishment & telecommunications corporations are obligated to pay fines of $1 million for each one of the people that have been hurt by this program. They will then be forced to terminate their illegal investment.
2. This program is automated and based on simulation apps that derive energy from your reactions, so IGNORE all the negative ideas fed by their computer to your mind. DON’T REACT. Maintain your life of normalcy as much as possible so as to stop feeding their computer with your energy. Their money investment is based on your energy. Reduce your use of electronic devices (computer, mobile, TV). Shut them off during your sleeping time. Add to your internet browsers the following apps: Adblock, Pop up adblock, Nocoin – Coin hiver blocker.
3. Obligate the nuclear establishment to apply the integrated programs to eliminate radiation pollution of internal and external radiation (of individuals, residences, workplaces, etc.).
4. Doses of less than 200 rem (radiation equivalent Man) can be given a medicine like cortisone to prevent vomiting, but in the case of 200-1000 rem, hope for recovery is possible only with antibiotics and intensive care. If the number of white blood cells less than 1000 per cubic millimeter, it is desirable to transfer blood cells, treat diarrhea, and transplant bone marrow.
5. When the body is exposed to certain radioactive elements such as cesium and thallium, the treatment is the Prussian blue medicine, which is associated with these radioactive elements and eliminated through the stool. This treatment quickly eliminates radioactive particles and reduces the amount of radioactive cells that may absorb them.
6. For treatment of radiation syndrome when the body is exposed to radioactive elements like plutonium, amerium and chlorium, the treatment is diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA), again linked to these radioactive elements and passing through the body in urine, which reduces the amount of absorbed radiation.
7. In order to determine the type of radiation exposure to make decisions for the treatment of patients, you have to do blood tests and know the changes in blood cells, especially white blood cells, measuring the dose of radiation absorbed through the dosimeter, with the radiation scan determining the location of the radioactive particles in the body.
8. Laboratory blood tests for periodic verification of the rate of decrease in the number of white blood cells to detect the extent of bone marrow damage and for treatment of bone marrow damage is accomplished by injecting the patient with proteins that stimulate the production of white blood cells—for example, the promoter filgrastim (Neupogen), sargramostim (Leukine) and pegfilgrastim (Neulasta).
9. Irradiation of iodine can inhibit thyroid absorption of radioactive iodine. When potassium iodide tablets are taken before or shortly after radiation exposure, the thyroid gland is saturated with iodine to reduce the amount of radioactive iodine absorbed and the risk of thyroid cancer. However, potassium iodide tablets do not protect against external exposure to radiation or any radioactive element other than radioactive iodine.
10. Clean your energy and physical body using Senna (a laxative prepared from the dried pods of the cassia tree, Wakame sea vegetables, camphor & cedar as they have the power to pull radiation out of your body. Include fasting 10 to 16 hours to increase immunity. Add exposure to the Sun daily for at least half an hour. Reduce sugar as it is the main energy source for infected cells.
11. Remove contaminated clothes and shoes. Wash gently with soap and water to remove additional radiation particles from the skin to prevent further dispersal of radioactive materials and reduce the risk from inhalation, ingestion or open wounds.
12. Clean the body with Dettol antiseptic to oxygenate and disable the implanted microchip. You can use white camphor oil (follow medical guidelines).
13. Cross your legs “X” and hands to close the body energy cores.
14. Radioactive contamination does not interact with alkaline. Eat alkaline foods containing iron, magnesium, potassium, vitamin E, vitamin D and vitamin B12, especially miso soup with wakame sea vegetable three times a day. Eat other alkaline foods like lentil soup, watercress, pickles, bananas, pomegranates, lemons, salmon or sardines. Take supplements containing these minerals, such as KELP tablets or kombu sea vegetable powder, Chlorella tablets (500 mg), potassium iodide pills, boron tablets, or magnesium-plus tablets.
15. Clean your clothes and bed sheets with Dettol or vinegar or sodium salt, plus the seating area. Vacuum to remove the smart dust and radioactive contamination (uranium, radon, polonium). Cover your food and drinks. Add sea salt or compost to human waste at the bathroom to reduce radon emissions from sewage and interaction of radioactive materials to prevent the attackers from taking advantage of the radioactive materials in the sewage. The main reason for deliberately polluting the air, water and food is to obtain nuclear fuel enriched by humans.
16. Check the ear canal for a silver radio chip (Psychotronics Microchips) with a microphone embedded in the bottom of the ear canal, one in each ear operating on the VHF frequency. It can play video so that the target can see forced waking visions and hear artificial sounds. Cover the ear with a plug until you can extract this chip. Add English salt (Epsom salt) or lemon in your ear to eliminate the artificial tinnitus “ringing in the ear.”
17. Use radio frequency jammers, frequency range: 200 – 840 MHz, GPS, UHF, VHF, GSM, 3G, 4G, 5.8G, LOJACK, CDMA to protect yourself from satellite and GPS tracking. A frequency counter should be used to measure the radio frequency at your home. You can use electronic bug detector apps like EMF Sensor Free and Electronic Bug Detector to detect the electronic energy weapons at your home or work.
18. Use the N52 Neodymium magnet on the implanted biochips to isolate the electromagnetic waves from the body as well as cover the head and infected body with aluminum foil, or wear Iron Hat. You can also disable biochips by using the electromagnetic pulse device “EMP.”
19. The most effective method is to try to detect biochip locations. Unfortunately, these micro-simulators are difficult to detect by CT or MRI. They may show their location by an increase of small white or black dots on your skin. Laser can remove these infected skin dots so you can analyze them at Material Characterization Lab through “EDS – Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy”—proof that skin samples contain silicon, tin, titanium and platinum while biochips are made of the same materials. You will find a high percentage of radioactive contamination like Thorium, Radon, Uranium, Polonium, Plutonium and Radium, and in regards to the electronic chips, radiation injection Radiotherapy is one of the interventional radiological processes, or use intensive ultrasound HIFU (high-energy sound waves aimed directly at an area of abnormal cells or tissue to create heat that kills cells).
20. Submit a lawsuit against this program, telecommunication companies & nuclear establishment obligating them to pay a fine of at least $1 million for each person hurt by this program, giving all medical reports like the EDS report or other evidence from samples of the electronic bug audiovisual that looks like black carbon Smart Dust as they spread it over the bed or sitting area, as well as the chemical and physical parameters of water in toilets for the purpose of radioactive waste measurement
21. Raise awareness of the general public and legal system around the world about the serious human rights abuse utilizing remote influencing technologies of the Nuclear Energy Program and share the healing tactics for freedom through social media, press and television so that civilian populations do not fall victim. Stop the production of biochips and boycott their use in medical purposes.
Soon our only food buying option will be Amazon drone delivery! In store shopping will be an experience of the past.
We have learned from the World Economic Forum Website calories will be distributed based on what will be allocated for survival and vital needs. Keeping populations on the verge of starvation makes the slaves/prisoners more controllable.
Just think if you are fat in this coming new world you will be punished for obvious food theft and hoarding. Hum? Preppers
Another obstacle coming our way is the Postmaster GENERAL will announce significant increased postage rates and eliminate “first class and AIR”. The mail will be greatly slowed down – no longer next day. Think about HOW this move will slow our economy further.
DeJoy’s plan also prevents first-class mail from being shipped by airplane, instead relying on trucks and a relay of distribution depots, the sources said.
Insider Comment: Electric trucks will further slow down all delivery systems. Our transportation infrastructure is intentionally crumbling – adding to high maintenance and vehicle repairs. Bridge collapses (due to climate warfare) will disconnect us from deliveries and travel which is being phased out. The 5-minute life style WILL be our future. Communication is being severed – so why not expect the Postmaster GENERAL to reduce mail delivery times for a higher cost? Soon you will only live in a world that is digitized and we will become A.I. Cyborgs. These plans will not pertain to everyone – as many will be killed.
The changes would coincide with a significant hike in postage rates, which DeJoy has already said is ‘imminent’.
U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is set to implement a new strategic plan that includes higher postage rates and the elimination of first-class tier of mail.
The plan to eliminate first-class mail, which includes letters, magazines, catalogs, among others, would slow down mail that typically arrives within two days and make it more costly to deliver for both consumers and businesses.
Top postal officials are scheduled to testify before a U.S. congressional panel on February 24, 2021
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy ‘plans to eliminate two-day delivery for first-class mail and hike postage rates’ as USPS struggles with billions in losses
Poop Could Be Our New Secret Weapon Against Mutant COVID Strains
“There’s a lot of utility in being able to understand, kind of as a sentinel surveillance system, what’s going on within a community without having to go out and and stick a swab up thousands of people’s noses,” said Patrick Ayscue, an epidemiologist and senior biosecurity fellow at the nonprofit Chan Zuckerberg Biohub.
Test community Sewer Systems to combat the new variants
In these communities, wastewater testing has already proven it can spot problems early.
“It’s not just a measure of how much there is right now; it’s also a measure of what’s coming,” said Nour Sharara, a public health expert at BioBot.
“As soon as people are infected, they start shedding the virus, before they start showing symptoms. Some people take five days to develop symptoms. But during those five days, we can already see it in the sewage, because it’s in their stool.”
To combat the new variants, the same technology would need to be ramped up and paired with a process known as “genomic surveillance,” which means analyzing samples to determine their strain.
If you missed this testing your sewer video – watch now! AGAIN
Sewer Plant analysis – such a system includes people who aren’t getting tested, either because they’re asymptomatic or only recently caught the virus, or they aren’t taking the pandemic seriously.
Checking NEIGHBORHOOD feces for coronavirus is that everyone poops.
A patchwork of communities around the country are already monitoring sewage for coronavirus. But these programs are focused on the amount of virus rather than the type.
The University of Arizona tests wastewater coming out of individual dorms, in a program that allowed administrators to find three COVID-positive students during the first week of classes last fall, before they sparked a wider contagion
The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, uses a wastewater testing system run by the private company BioBot to help determine whether schools should be open or shut. The city posts results on a website, which says that as of February 1, local wastewater contained 446 viral particles per milliliter.
In these communities, wastewater testing has already proven it can spot problems early.
“It’s not just a measure of how much there is right now; it’s also a measure of what’s coming,” said Nour Sharara, a public health expert at BioBot. (the nonprofit Chan Zuckerberg Biohub).
“As soon as people are infected, they start shedding the virus, before they start showing symptoms. Some people take five days to develop symptoms. But during those five days, we can already see it in the sewage, because it’s in their stool.”
To combat the new variants, the same technology would need to be ramped up and paired with a process known as “genomic surveillance,” which means analyzing samples to determine their strain.
The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, uses a wastewater testing system run by the private company BioBot to help determine whether schools should be open or shut. The city posts results on a website, which says that as of February 1, local wastewater contained 446 viral particles per milliliter.
In these communities, wastewater testing has already proven it can spot problems early.
“It’s not just a measure of how much there is right now; it’s also a measure of what’s coming,” said Nour Sharara, a public health expert at BioBot.
“As soon as people are infected, they start shedding the virus, before they start showing symptoms. Some people take five days to develop symptoms. But during those five days, we can already see it in the sewage, because it’s in their stool.”
To combat the new variants, the same technology would need to be ramped up and paired with a process known as “genomic surveillance,” which means analyzing samples to determine their strain. which means analyzing samples to determine their strain..
Ramping up a wastewater genomic surveillance program could give authorities advance warning that a new, dangerous variant has spread to a particular location, so they can take action early.
Testing wastewater for coronavirus generally involves inserting a device into a manhole to pull out samples of sludge at regular intervals—for example, 50 milliliters every 15 minutes. But the best access points are hardly located in ideal spots. In some towns, researchers might have to prop up manholes in the middle of Main Street to get the kind of access they’d need.
The cost of a national program could easily run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, even though advocates say it’s worth the money.
The U.S. should allocate roughly 10% of its overall coronavirus testing budget to a new national wastewater program, said Smith.
“In my opinion, there’s an unbelievable upside to making this investment,” Smith said.
Such a program would help America’s catch the ground and time lost thanks to its dismal failure to track the spread of coronavirus mutations so far.
The U.S. genetically analyzes less than 1 percent of all cases; experts say we should be analyzing at least 5 percent just to have an idea of what’s out there. The UK, Denmark and Iceland are closer to 10 percent.
In addition to variants first identified in the UK, Brazil and South Africa, scientists have recently identified seven more variants in the U.S. that researchers are naming after birds in order to make them easier to remember.
The so-called Robin 1 has spread to some 30 states, especially in the midwest. Another called Pelican was first found in Oregon and has since spread to 12 states. Others are being called Quail, Bluebird, Yellowhammer and Robin 2.
“The variants from South Africa, from the UK and from Brazil, you know, we’re watching,” said Auclair. “But the ones that scare me the most? It’s the ones I don’t know about.”
Yet the real danger may be the variants that haven’t yet been identified—because we aren’t looking hard enough.
Any strategy that successfully manipulates public opinion is bound to be repeated, and we can now clearly see how the tobacco industry’s playbook is being used to shape the public narrative about COVID-19 and the projected post-COVID era.
In 2011, after many years of raising awareness regarding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and industrial agriculture, we decided we needed a new game plan. Educating people through our newsletter was great, but we realized the best way to expose Monsanto — a leading GMO advocate and patented seed owner at the time — was to get them to engage directly and ensure national attention.
To that end, Mercola.com funded the signature gathering in California that initiated Proposition 37, the right to know what’s in your food by ensuring proper GMO labeling. We spent more than $1 million for the Prop 37 initiative, plus several million dollars more for GMO labeling initiatives in other U.S. states in the following years.
This initiative forced Monsanto to engage with the public directly to defend their toxic products and dangerous business practices, all while receiving national coverage in the process.
The Monsanto Case
Monsanto spent tens of millions of dollars attacking anyone in their way, but they did so indirectly, just like the tobacco industry did before them. This is the core take-home of what I’m about to describe next.
They used a public relations team to do most of their dirty work — paying scientists and academics to voice their “independent opinions,” influencing scientific journals, and getting journalists and editorial boards to write favorable and influential pieces to help them maintain their lies and influence minds.
Still, while the spending of tens of millions of dollars to influence voters resulted in a narrow defeat of Prop 37, the new, widespread awareness of GMOs, pesticides and industrial agriculture eventually led to Monsanto’s demise.
In 2013, in a last-ditch effort to salvage its tarnished image, Monsanto hired the PR firm Ketchum. As noted in a HuffPost article by Paul Thacker,1 “Monsanto hit reboot with Ketchum,” which “created a campaign called GMO Answers, and used social media and third-party scientists to offer a counter narrative to allay concern about Monsanto’s products.”
The GMO Answers’ website is set up to allow professors at public universities answer GMO questions from the public — supposedly without remuneration from the industry. But over the years, evidence emerged showing that these academics are far from independent, and often end up getting paid for their contributions via hidden means, such as unrestricted grants.
University of Florida professor Kevin Folta is one prominent example described in my 2016 article “Scientific American — Another Monsanto Bedfellow.” In that article, I also review how GMO Answers co-sponsored a panel discussion about GMOs in March that year with the media and partnerships division of Scientific American.
At the time, Jeremy Abatte, vice president and publisher of Scientific American, insisted the event was not a Ketchum event but a Scientific American event. Few bought his reasoning though, and many ended up filing Scientific American into the chemical biotech shill category.
Having purchased Monsanto at the end of 2016, Bayer continued the strategy to rely on PR firms for public acceptance. In the article2 “Bayer’s Shady PR Firms: Fleishmanhillard, Ketchum, FTI Consulting,” U.S. Right to Know reviews the many deception scandals involving these firms. A key discovery was evidence showing “there are objective strategies to silence strong voices.”
After investigating the strategies used by Monsanto and Bayer, we can now see that the same playbook is being used by Big Tech and Big Pharma to shape the public narratives about COVID-19 and the Great Reset. Again, a central facet of these campaigns is to silence critics, in particular those with large online followings, including yours truly.
According to Ahmed, I and others who question the safety and necessity of a COVID-19 vaccine may be prone to violent extremism. This defamatory statement clearly has no basis in reality whatsoever. Rather, it’s part of the propaganda aimed at destroying the opposition — in this case the opposition to the technocrats driving the Great Reset agenda, which spans across social, economic and health related sectors.
As reported by the National Vaccine Information Center, which was also on the CCDH list of national security threats:3
“The anonymously funded CCDH also has an office in Washington, D.C. and the defamatory publicity campaign created in December 2020 was designed to not only discredit NVIC’s four-decade public record of working within the U.S. democratic system to secure vaccine safety and informed consent protections in public health policies and laws, but to destroy our small charity.”
In “The Real Truth about Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change: Paragraph-by-Paragraph Comments on an Article by Dr. William Happer,” Dr. Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs at the Climate Institute in Washington, DC, takes on the prominent ‘skeptic’ Princeton physicist and Marshall Institute board chairman with a detailed and illuminating rebuttal.
Dr. William Happer, the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University, who also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Marshall Institute in Washington DC, has been a prominent and outspoken critic of the science of climate change, its impacts, and proposed policies to deal with it. In the June/July 2011 issue of First Things, Dr. Happer published a summary of his views: “The Truth About Greenhouse Gases: The dubious science of the climate crusaders” (see http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-truth-about-greenhouse-gases). The paper is so misleading that, in my view, it merits a paragraph-by-paragraph response. Indeed, being an alumnus of Princeton University and having devoted my career to study of climate change science, preparing a response almost seemed an obligation.
In offering these comments, my intent is to present the findings and perspectives of the national and international science community, illuminated with insights gained over more than four decades of seeking to improve understanding of how the Earth system works and is affected by natural and human events. In contrast to Dr. Happer’s view that the science of climate change is like a house of cards (i.e., find one flaw and the whole sense of understanding will fall), I have tried to give a sense of why, as Professor Henry Pollack of the University of Michigan has put it, the science of climate change is like a rope hammock (i.e., with lots of interconnections and linkages, such that weaknesses or failure of any particular detailed finding does not weaken the overall strength of scientific understanding).
Unless footnoted, the views I have offered are primarily drawn from IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report and/or from perspectives on climate change that are summarized at http://www.climate.org/topics/climate-change/science-in-six-findings.html and references, including a review paper, that can be downloaded from that site.
The full set of points made by Dr. Happer is included below, in paragraph-by-paragraph order, with my comments on each paragraph immediately following. To assist in referring to Dr. Happer’s various paragraphs, I have numbered the paragraphs sequentially, and my response is provided in italics. To provide a sense of the issues covered, the table gives a sense of the questions that an independent moderator might ask that would lead to the exchange regarding each paragraph, and the reader may want to use this to jump to comments and responses on a topic of particular interest.
A key to Will Happer’s assertions and Mike MacCracken’s responses:
1. Is the climate change community really off on a “climate crusade”?
2. Is CO2 a pollutant or a vital molecule for life on Earth—or both?
3. On what basis is EPA moving to regulate CO2?
4 through 7. Isn’t CO2 a nutrient for plants? Don’t we really want to have a higher CO2 concentration? Wasn’t the CO2 level actually nearly too low? Won’t more CO2 be beneficial?
8 and 9. How high can the CO2 level be without impacting human health? What is the optimal range for the CO2 concentration?
10 and 11. Is the increasing CO2 concentration really having adverse impacts?
12 and 13. Will increasing CO2 really cause warming? Is it really human activities causing the warming?
14 through 17. What does the history of Earth’s climate tell us over centuries to tens of millions of years? Hasn’t the Earth’s climate always been changing? So what makes the present warming significant?
18, 19, and 20. Has the IPCC really considered what has been learned from the study of Earth’s climatic history?
21 and 22. Is the “hockey stick” curve indicating recent warming really solid? Don’t the hacked emails show that climate data were manipulated?
23, 24 and 25. Has peer-review been compromised? Isn’t it biased?
26. Will the warming in response to the rising CO2 concentration be significant? How fast will these changes be occurring?
27. Will shifting to renewables enrich a few with political ties at the expense of the majority?
28, 29 and 30. Are computer models reliable enough to depend on? Aren’t they tuned and therefore unreliable? Can they really be used to project into the future?
31, 32, and 33. What has led to climate change being seen as so controversial? Has the science been co-opted by politics? How large is the funding for climate change research?
34 and 35. Are the views of those who are critical of the climate change results being suppressed? Aren’t their reputations being impugned?
36, 37, and 38. Are professional societies being corrupted by the climate change proponents? Has the American Physical Society misrepresented the views of its members?
39, 40 and 41. Is the public getting a balanced picture of climate change science? What is the trend in public understanding and viewpoint? Is the public just being rushed to judgment?
42 and 43. Aren’t there other environmental problems more deserving of emphasis than climate change? Where should the attention lie?
From MacCracken’s conclusion:
Building a better future can only be accomplished by facing up to the impacts that increasing CO2 emissions are having on the climate, on sea level, and on ocean acidification. That Dr. Happer is slowing this down by putting forth scientific statements that indicate so little understanding (presumably, because of reading too narrowly or with too closed a mind) is very disappointing. In the years that I was at Princeton and the grading system went from 1 (high) to 7 (low), I regret to say that Dr. Happer would have earned the 7. This grade was actually hard to get because it indicated “flagrant neglect” in one’s studies. For his generally uninformed and limited discussion and understanding of climate change science, however, I very much regret to say that Dr. Happer seems clearly to have earned that designation.
