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Kodak Could Have Introduced the Digital Camera but Made This Mistake

January 11, 2018
 Staff

WRITER

Kodak was an iconic company and a leader in the film business. But did you know that Kodak, a company that went bankrupt in 2012, could have launched the first digital camera but passed on the opportunity?

In 1975, a Kodak engineer invented the digital camera. But even though Kodak had the early advantage and patented vital technologies that are still used in digital cameras, the company didn’t want to disrupt its film business with a camera that didn’t require film. By the time Kodak officially went digital, it was too late – competitors like Nikon and Sony had already crowded the field.

On today’s show, Glenn and Stu revisited this infamous story to illustrate how quickly the world is changing and how technologies can become obsolete almost overnight.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Hello, and welcome to the program. Coming up we're going to go into some of the predictions. I think today is tech predictions.

STU: Technology.

GLENN: And it's weird because a lot of these tech things are already happening. Yesterday we told you about KODAKCoin. This is the first time to be excited if you have anything to do with Kodak. It's like, they learned their lesson! You know the story about how they went out of business? How fast that happened? You don't know this? This is fascinating. So Kodak, you know, made film, obviously. They were the film dealer for everybody. They are state of the art film and film processing.

And they had a billion employees in Rochester, New York.

And they see the digital camera and they say, well, that's not going to take off. So they decided to not -- we'll let other people do the digital thing. We'll just stay in film.

One Christmas went by, and it was the first Christmas that digital cameras started to take off. They met again and they were like, no, we're a film company. Three Christmas later, they were almost out of business. It happened that fast. They went from the Titan to three years later, nothing. And they're like, maybe we should do the digital thing and it was too late. The first thing that I think Kodak has done that was smart, they just come out, announced it Monday or Tuesday, a KODAKCoin, and it's like Bitcoin. But here's -- and this is in one of my predictions, that some company is going to do this and they're going to use blockchain and Bitcoin to do it, and I said in the prediction that it would be Facebook or Apple or somebody like that.

Kodak is the one that comes out and does it. And what they've done is, you know how you have, you know, the photo thing, not Reuters, but ...

You always see. You go there for stock photos of news things. I don't know if you've ever seen it.

STU: Yeah, there's a few companies that do that.

GLENN: The big one, you sell your -- or you post your photo of, I've got the President picking his nose, and they put it on a service, and that service goes and everybody has it, and if you want to use it for television or radio or newspaper or something, you just buy it from them, and then that company pays you.

STU: Getty Images?

GLENN: That's what it is.

So Kodak has decided they're going to do it. And so what they do, in your camera, you will take pictures, and it will automatically go into blockchain and be held by you, and you can immediately post it. I mean, you take it, and it posts for sale from Kodak, and then there's no middleman. They're not negotiating anything. It's just posted. They buy it, they buy it through KODAKCoin. You get paid immediately, and it's simple, and there's no middleman. That's KODAKCoin.

STU: That's great.

GLENN: It's really brilliant.

STU: It's interesting because they have a big renaissance because they've tied themselves to this blockchain idea and that's happening to a lot of companies. A lot of them are like very strange stories, like this Chanticleer Holdings. Are you a big fan of them?

GLENN: Chanticleer? I've heard of it.

STU: They own several Hooters restaurants, nine Hooters restaurants, and they own some of the stock at Hooters of America.

GLENN: I'm trying to figure out the connection to blockchain.

STU: Right. That's where a lot of people are too. They said, a couple of weeks ago, that they would use blockchain related technology for its customer rewards program. And their stock went up 50%.

GLENN: That happened -- I saw that happen last year. There was another company that just has nothing -- they didn't know that they were putting blockchain. Nothing. They just put blockchain in their name. It was like, Glenn's Blockchain, and it went up. And the company has nothing to do with chain. They were just like, it's like money off of the blockchain.

STU: Really smart.

GLENN: That's Warren Buffett saying, don't invest if you don't know how it works. You know. Most people don't even understand what blockchain is, let alone Glenn's block change. That's somebody going, I know! Put some money in that blockchain thing!

STU: They're thinking, here's a new company, or a company that's changing its goals and they're working in blockchain. Get in now, get in early. Whoever owns that company, increases their cash by 50% or whatever it is. And then they can sell, and make a bunch of money and when it turns out they're actually do it, eventually the stock will come down but it's a good idea.

GLENN: I had a two-hour meeting with a guy from Silicon Valley who's a real mover and shaker and been instrumental in some of the new companies out now, the new tech companies and had a fascinating conversation.

Yesterday, Stu and I had a conversation with a blockchain and cryptocurrency guy.

And man, I hope he's right.

STU: Yeah, he was optimistic, I had say.

GLENN: Yeah, what was he say that he thought? Bitcoin would go up to? He said.

STU: It was 500,000?

GLENN: 500,000, I thought. And he didn't put a time period on that, did you.

STU: No, I don't think so.

GLENN: And he's been right about a lot of these things. I've sure he's been wrong, but he's been right about a lot of these things. There's a lot to learn like a theorem. He taught us about a theorem yesterday. I didn't release that was like an operating system.

STU: Yeah, it is. A lot of these secondary or even below that coins are built on. It's like, that's the operating system for these new, you know, Bitcoin types. I'm trying to explain this in a way that -- [overlapping voices] KODAKCoin is probably built on a theorem. Which is essentially the operating system for it.

GLENN: How is -- I was reading so have some stuff from Milton Friedman. We put it on a monologue on TV last night. But Milton Friedman talked about the internet and said the internet is going to be gigantic, and it will really change things. It will change government and everything else once you come up with a digital currency.

And here we are. We're at a digital currency. And you just wonder, how is -- how are the governments of the world, when push comes to shove, they're so far behind that they don't -- I remember having a conversation with somebody in Congress who sits on a committee for this kind of stuff, and I was talking to them about the technology that's coming. Me. Me. I have a rudimentary at best understanding of the stuff.

And they just kept looking at me and blinking, and they were in a room with a few people, and they were like, huh. We're going to have to look into that. Maybe we should -- we should look at, is there regulation that would -- we should be looking into? And I went, what? By the time you guys even figure this out, it's too late.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: And they just -- they have no concept of what's coming.

STU: Yeah, people talk about this, and it's not a matter of whether cryptocurrencies fail because of the governments try to stop them. It's the idea whether governments will fail because of cryptocurrencies. So it's interesting. And I think like, these things obviously been in the news a lot. I think there's different levels of interest. Like the top tier people who are real investors and really know this stuff -- excuse me -- there's a secondary tier.

GLENN: Would you like some more NyQuil?

STU: The secondary tier of people who know a decent amount about it and invested in it. There are people who follow the news and are interested in things like a money supply that the government can't inflate. I think a lot of people in our audience are interested in that aspect of it, the idea that that thing could solve something we've been complaining about for decades, and it's not centralized through a government. I think there's a level of interest there. I think at the bottom of it is just, I like hearing stories about people getting megarich off of things. I love those stories are, like, someone invests a dollar -- we had someone who wrote in yesterday to one of our stories on Facebook and said, they got in an argument with --

GLENN: With their wife.

STU: -- in 2017 about buying 500 bitcoins.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

STU: Now, 2013!

GLENN: How much was that?

STU: Let me look at the Bitcoin charge here real quick.

GLENN: I didn't realize was 500 Bitcoins. Somebody in our audience, we have to talk to you. If that's you, you have to call in.

STU: Oh, my gosh.

GLENN: So how much was it?

STU: I'm looking here.

GLENN: He had an argument with his wife, and she said, we're not going to put money in Bitcoin. And he said, honey, right now it will cost us how much?

STU: I'm looking that up.

GLENN: We should invest 500 Bitcoin.

STU: Can you imagine? Can you freaking imagine.

GLENN: 2013, that had to be --

STU: 2013 we are at --

GLENN: It had to be 200?

STU: To 2013 it changed -- that was the year that it had its first -- what they were calling at the time a bubble where it peaked at a thousand dollars. Okay? But then it ran down with it was -- he said 2012 or 2013. So 2013, it was, for most of the year, about $100. At the beginning of the 2013 it was $13.

GLENN: 500.

STU: So that would have been $25,000, right? 50 times 500 is $25,000. So that's a good -- so you think, I don't know.

GLENN: Now do 500 times let's say $15,000.

STU: $15,000 will get you a return of $7.5 million.

GLENN: Are they still together? Are they still together? We have to track that listener down.

STU: Yeah, he said -- we had the argument, I lost the argument, and I'm still poor was the way he described it. $500 Bitcoins, he must have had some money. But $7.5 million is better than 8,000 in money, at least that's my impression.

GLENN: Is it? I'm not sure. That common core math?

STU: I have to show my work. But that's nothing compared to the goes who founded Ripple. Now Ripple is another cryptocurrency. You have the Bitcoin, theorem, light coin.

GLENN: Ripple seems pretty shady, only because they announced that Ripple was going to go on to coin base, and if --

STU: They didn't announce that. That is a rumor. There's no reason to believe that that's happening at this point.

GLENN: No, I know that but I thought it came from them.

STU: No, I don't think so.

GLENN: Well, somebody -- and it looks pretty -- it looked pretty solid and it went from like 1.50 to 350, 3.90, something like that.

STU: And it's in the high one dollars right now. But it was also 0.06 -- or 0. -- 0.6 cents in 2017.

0.6 cents is what it was. You could have bought these things for 0.6 cents. Now it's different from let's say Bitcoin, as I was talking about, it's not centralized. Right? And it is -- there's a limited amount of Bitcoins that will ever be created, so there's no inflationary risk here. Most of the Bitcoins, 80 some odd percent of them are already out. So there's not an inflation there.

Ripple, they created 100 billion of three things upon inception. So they created 100 billion of them, and the way they gave them away, they did giveaways, they did all sorts of things, but they've only released a third of them. So 66 billion of these Ripple coins are held by the company, which is like three guys who created them.

They're currently about $2 per coin. Okay? So that's a lot of money.

The way this breaks down, Forbes looked at it. It's actually insane. The cofounder and CEO, Chris Larson, who stepped in, he now serves at the executive chairman. He has 5.19 billion Ripple tokens.

And his personal holdings, and a 17% stake in the --

GLENN: He's not $5 --

STU: No, more than that. His net worth currently -- and this is slightly higher than it was now, but net worth personal, $37.3 billion. That would make him the 15th richest American on the 2017 Forbes 400 list.

GLENN: This stuff is going to -- this stuff is going to change the world. Think of the power shift. Here's the guy who had nothing!

And now he's got $37 billion! I mean, you know.

(Laughter.)

In the wrong hands, we -- Hooters is going to be where Congress meets!

(Music).

STU: I got news for you. They're already meeting there.

GLENN: It is a Hooters. Without the wings.

THE CORONAVIRUS HEADLINE TIMELINE: Where we are NOW vs. where China was THEN

NOAA

With all the panic surrounding the coronavirus outbreak, it's important to stay calm and remember where we are as things begin to get worse in the US. We are currently around 50 days behind China in the course of this illness and you won't believe some of the stories and headlines that were out there at the time. Check back each day as we update these stories, here are a few:

February 4th — 63 days ago

The city of Taizhou and three Hangzhou districts will only allow one person per household to go outside every two days to buy necessities, city officials said. The areas between them account for more than nine million people.

Nationwide, despite China's extensive surveillance network with its facial recognition systems and high end cameras which is increasingly used to track its people, the gov has turned to familiar authoritarian techniques - such as setting up dragnets and asking neighbors to inform each other.

Victor Lam, the government's chief information officer, said the wristbands will be connected to a phone plugged into the mains at the wearer's home. If the wristband moves too far away from the phone, an alert will be sent to the authorities.

However, Lam was spotted wearing a mask on Tuesday morning when receiving petitions outside her office from protesters angered at her government's response to the outbreak, just before meeting reporters.

Viruses mutate all the time, but most changes are synonymous or "silent", having little effect on the way the virus behaves. Others, known as nonsynonymous substitutions, can alter biological traits, allowing them to adapt to different environments. Two nonsynonymous changes took place.

China says it has more than 20,000 confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus, representing a huge leap from the 4,400 cases reported as of last week.


February 13th — 54 days ago

Health authorities in China's Hubei province – the epicentre of the coronavirus epidemic – reported on Thursday 14,840 new confirmed cases, almost 10 times the number reported a day earlier, and new deaths attributable to the contagion rose to 242, more than double on the day.

"At some point, we are likely to see community spread in the U.S. or in other countries," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. "This will trigger a change in our response strategy."

The coronavirus outbreak may be peaking in China where it was first detected in the central city of Wuhan but it is just beginning in the rest of the world and likely to spread, a global expert on infectious diseases said on Feb. 12.

Global health experts are divided on whether the coronavirus outbreak has peaked or worse is to come, but a more fundamental problem for front-line hospitals and laboratories is identifying when a person carrying the virus becomes infectious to others.

Wuhan's overburdened health workers are unable to confirm many of those who died were suffering from Covid-19, so they will not show up in official figures

Hong Kong schools will remain closed until March 16 at the earliest and an important exam for primary school pupils has been cancelled, the education minister said on Thursday.


February 14th — 53 days ago

Medical personnel in Wuhan, outfitted in protective suits as they battle the coronavirus outbreak, wear diapers as they work through gruelling shifts, often until skin irritation from their masks leaves bloody marks on their faces.

The new cases bring the number of passengers and crew members infected with the virus to 218.

A Japanese health official who visited the quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess in Yokohama has been diagnosed with the Wuhan coronavirus, Japan's health ministry reported Wednesday.

A cruise ship that spent two weeks at sea after being turned away by five countries over fears that someone aboard may have the coronavirus arrived in Cambodia on Thursday to the relief of passengers and the praise of global health officials.

A labeling mix-up was to blame for a San Diego hospital mistakenly releasing a patient infected with the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday.

Bats, rats and snakes are still flying off the shelves at an Indonesian market known for its wildlife offerings despite a government request to take them off the menu over coronavirus fears.

The invisible enemy

"This was a sneak attack, like a thief in the night."

"A wartime President."

"A great battle, against an invisible enemy."

"We will win and declare a great victory for our country."

All of these are direct quotes from President Donald Trump, all uttered since March 1st of this year.

And of course, all of them ring decidedly true and make perfect sense. Even Trump's most ardent opponents have referred to the current situation in which America finds itself as a once in a generation emergency, and that we should be on a wartime footing. They've called for more and more power to be handed to, no, more explicitly they've called for more power to be taken by the President to do battle against "The Invisible Enemy," everything from commandeering manufacturing plants to logistics and shipping companies to pharmaceutical manufacturing and research, to nationalizing the banking sector and all mortgages.

On the other hand, the President has preferred to form a partnership with private industries to wage the war. Turning to America's great companies to produce masks, respirators, ventilators, medicine and vaccines that will ensure our country can and will prevail.

The United States – and the entire world – is engaged in a great battle, against an unseen enemy. An enemy that threatens to kill our people and destroy our nation and our way of life. It's an enemy that we have seen and fought before, as a people. We have faced this enemy throughout human history, over and over we've had to battle it. All of us are descendants of survivors of the countless previous wars that humanity has had to fight against this hidden enemy of man.

The enemy is a disease. The enemy is a virus.

The enemy is not SARS-CoV-2, Coronavirus.

No, the virus we're battling against is Slavery.

Call it what you want. Socialism. Collectivism. Communism. Statism. Despotism. A one-world government. Those are all forms of the same thing: some people's individual liberty captured for the betterment and benefit of others. All of those are forms of enslaving some men to the will and needs of others.

A virus is a biological construct. It's a biological disease caused by a virus, an unliving, unthinking sliver of organic material and takes over cells to turn them into factories that produce more viral particles to take over more cells until, ultimately, the host is killed. Doing battle against a virus requires treating both the symptoms caused by infection as well as finding a vaccine that can destroy the virus itself.

But slavery is a political and moral construct. It's a social disease caused by an immoral idea, spread by unthinking, unfeeling human beings who transmit the disease to others turning them into factories that produce more unthinking, unfeeling human beings. They take over the lives of more and more people within a society or a country until that country is destroyed. Doing battle against slavery requires treating both the symptoms caused by the infection within a society as well as finding a cure that can destroy the idea itself.

President Donald Trump is absolutely correct. This is a war.

President Donald Trump is absolutely correct. This is a war. He's also correct, we have fought this type of war before.

But this is not a war against a coronavirus. That's child's play. Terrible though it may be and despite the thousands of lives we may lose to COVID-19, it's relatively straightforward how to defeat it. Prevent the spread, find a cure. And we will. America and the world will survive this pandemic as it has survived a million others in our past. Each of us is the descendent of survivors of a thousand biological plagues.

The President rightly stated, we cannot let the cure for COVID-19 be worse than the disease itself. And he has the right idea in terms of the outcome here: we can't let our response to coronavirus destroy the American economy.

But saving the American economy isn't really the objective. A healthy, productive American economy that enables people to generate wealth and accumulate things is a consequence, an outcome, it's not a cause in itself. What has enabled the American economy to be the most robust and powerful engine for human ingenuity, productivity and wealth generation in world history is individual liberty? Men free to think and build, to seek new achievements and to be rewarded for doing so, to collaborate with each other, to challenge and compete with each other, driving each other to be smarter, to work harder, to find the better way to solve problems.

That is America. That is the battle we're in, what we're fighting to save. Beating COVID-19 is easy, it's only a matter of time. This particular virus may be new to us, but we know the formula for its defeat, much like the long-march to destroy the NAZI war machine in World War II, the writing was on the wall long before Berlin fell. Germany's defeat was inevitable once America entered the war. So too, the defeat of SARS-CoV-2 is already a foregone conclusion, the application of human ingenuity and thousands of years of human inventiveness and knowledge ensures our ultimate victory over this latest scourge.

But that is not the great threat. If the cure for COVID-19 is the slavery of some men for the benefit and betterment of others, then perhaps it would be better for COVID-19 to take us all. If the cost of defeating the biological virus is that we succumb to the political and moral disease of collectivism, then Trump's fear will have been proved right and the cure will have been worse than the disease.

Look at what's being proposed here. In the US, the government should take over every major industry, from healthcare and pharmaceutical companies to grocery and food delivery to airlines to shipping and transportation. Construction, take it over! Banking system, take it over! Stock market, take it over!

And on the global stage, the United Nations is now calling for a permanent 10% global tax on the GDP of every country.

And on the global stage, the United Nations is now calling for a permanent 10% global tax on the GDP of every country.
Ostensibly designed to fight COVID-19, but made permanent to enable the UN to fight future pandemics, as well as the ongoing pandemic of Climate Change…oh, and Poverty and Income Inequality, and sexism and nationalism and a thousand other isms they believe are unfair.

The United States is less than 5% of the World's population, but we represent over 25% of the world's GDP. So, the UN is effectively proposing that about 4% of the population transfer 10% of our wealth each year to support the remaining 96% of the human race, including supporting countries who are our enemies and who seek our very destruction.

What is proposed here is nothing short of the permanent enslavement of the United States for the betterment and benefit of every other national on earth.

There is no doubt the human race will survive COVID-19. Human beings have survived a thousand similar pandemics with barely more than a blip in our progress as a species.

But the plague of collectivism, the idea that some men should be slaves to others, that some people have some sort of right to lay claim to the intellect and productive energy of others, that is the real battle. That is the true invisible enemy that we must yet again defeat.

Ask yourself, would you have some right to charge into Mike Lindell's My Pillow bedding factory and point a gun at him and his workers to force them to produce cotton face masks to avoid being shot? No, of course the idea sounds preposterous and all rational thinking human beings would clearly see that as an immoral, criminal act. And yet many people are proposing that we do exactly that, just the gunman wears a blue UN Helmet or carries a US Marshall's badge.

Alternatively, does Mike Lindell have the right to choose to convert his factory over to making cotton face masks, at his own expense and to pay his workers to make those masks instead of making pillows? Yes, that is moral, that is a human being engaged in activity that he believes to be virtuous and right and, yes, for the love of all that is holy — profitable.

Just as with COVID-19, the defeat of all forms of slavery should be an inevitability. And yet from every corner of our country, the call is for the forced enslavement of some people for the benefit of others.

President Trump has this right. We cannot let the cure for COVID-19 come at the cost of our economy. And if that is the objective, then it is our original principles: individual liberty, freedom of movement and speech, that is what must be defended. That is how we protect and restore our economy and our country. That is how we ensure that our children's children will also be descendants of survivors of plagues and pandemics, whether they are the biological - or the moral kind.

UPDATE: Here's how the discussion went on radio. Watch the video below.


YouTube youtu.be

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: April 6th

Glenn gives the latest coronavirus numbers, updating YOU on everything needed to know as Americans and officials monitor China's new COVID-19 virus:

Daily Stats as of 5:30 AM CT (from John's Hopkins)

  • Total Confirmed Cases Worldwide: 1,284,805 (up over 250,000 from 1,030,324 Friday)
  • Total Confirmed Deaths Worldwide: 70,328 (up 16,100 from 54,226 Friday)
  • Total Confirmed Recovered Worldwide: 271,782 (up from 219,896 Friday)
  • 5% of Active Cases are considered serious (requiring hospitalization) Steady from 5% Friday, but down from 19% high back in February
  • Note that about 11% of US Confirmed Cases require Hospitalization, roughly on par with Italy at 12% requiring hospitalization but lower than Spain, where 17% of patients require hospitalization.
  • US has 336,851 Confirmed Cases and 9,620 Deaths, up from 245,380 cases and 6,095 cases Friday
  • The US currently has 309,254 Active Cases of COVID-19, with about 1% of the US Population tested
NY Times: Official US Death Toll Off a Bit...By About 100% https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICO0KwPFWcI, https://www.wsj.com/video/in-ecuador-epicenter-families-forced-to-leave-dead-outside/B35D7405-55AC-4876-821F-8B995AAEF1BD.html
  • In one Italian village, a Mayor reported he had more than 300 bodies, presumed COVID-19 deaths, which officials had not picked up or counted in Italy's official numbers. "The army told us Friday, then Sunday. We're still waiting," he said.
    • Virus Can Contaminate Facemasks up to 7 Days https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3078511/coronavirus-can-remain-face-masks-week-study-finds
    • The pathogen that causes COVID-19 is gone within three hours from surfaces like printing and tissue paper, but can last for days on banknotes, stainless steel and plastic, researchers from University of Hong Kong find.
    • The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 can adhere to the outer layer of a cotton surgical face mask for a week, according to a study by researchers from the University of Hong Kong (HKU).
    • "This is exactly why it is very important if you are wearing a surgical mask you don't touch the outside of the mask," Dr. Peiris, research lead, said.
    • "Because you can contaminate your hands and if you touch your eyes you could be transferring the virus to your eyes."
    • In the instance where the public or health care workers must be forced to reuse masks due to short supply, the study recommends using surgical gloves and frequently washing hands immediately after using facemasks.
    USA Today Factcheck: Did Obama Deplete US National Stockpile of N-95 Masks? True! https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/03/fact-check-did-obama-administration-deplete-n-95-mask-stockpile/5114319002/
    • USA Today researchers Fact Check Daily Wire article from last week that the Obama Administration failed to replenish the National Stockpile of N-95 masks after using for Swine Flu (2009) and Hurricane & Flooding clean up operations (2012).
    • The article notes available funds were used not to replenish masks: "With limited resources, officials in charge of the stockpile tend to focus on buying lifesaving drugs from small biotechnology firms that would, in the absence of a government buyer, have no other market for their products, experts said.
    • Masks and other protective equipment are in normal times widely available and thus may not have been prioritized for purchase, they said."
    • Overall, USA today flags the Daily Wire story as True, lending credence to the Trump claim that the stockpile program was 'in a shambles' when his Administration took over.
    "Most Comprehensive Pandemic Response Plan In History" Bush Plan Based on Spanish Flu Book in 2005 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-bush-2005-wait-pandemic-late-prepare/story?id=69979013
    • In the summer of 2005, President George W. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he began flipping through an advance copy of a new book about the 1918 flu pandemic. He couldn't put it down.
    • When he returned to Washington, he called his top homeland security adviser into the Oval Office and gave her historian John M. Barry's "The Great Influenza," which told the chilling tale of the mysterious plague that "would kill more people than any other disease in human history."
    • "You've got to read this," Fran Townsend remembers the president telling her. "He said, 'Look, this happens every 100 years. We need a national strategy.'"
    • Thus was born the nation's most comprehensive pandemic plan -- a playbook that included diagrams for a global early warning system, funding to develop new, rapid vaccine technology, and a robust national stockpile of critical supplies, such as face masks and ventilators, Townsend said.
    • The effort was intense over the ensuing three years, including exercises where cabinet officials gamed out their responses, but it was not sustained.
    • Large swaths of the ambitious plan were either not fully realized due to lack of funding from Congress, or were entirely shelved as the 2008 financial crisis took hold.
    The Latest Casualty: Corona Beer Officially Stops Production https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/business/corona-beer-production/index.html
    • Production of Corona beer is being temporarily suspended in Mexico because of the coronavirus pandemic.
    • Grupo Modelo, the company that makes the beer, posted the announcement on Twitter, stating that it's halting production and marketing of its beer because the Mexican government has shuttered non-essential businesses.
    • This week, the Mexican government announced the suspension of non-essential activities in the public and private sectors until April 30 in an effort to curb the spread of the virus. The country has more than 1,500 cases and 50 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins, but researchers fear the actual number of infected and dead could be much higher than reported as almost no testing has occurred in Mexico.
    • Grupo Modelo stated it is ready to enact a plan to "guarantee the supply of beer" if the Mexican government decides to include breweries as essential, according to a statement.
    Japan, Hong Kong May Declare States of Emergency After Virus Researgance https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3078542/coronavirus-japan-set-declare-state-emergency-amid-surge, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3078491/coronavirus-hong-kong-may-have-impose-wider-lockdown
    • Both Japan & Hong Kong saw new waves of COVID-19 cases as travel and work restrictions were lifted about 10 days ago.
    • Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to declare a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic, a government official said on Monday, as a recent surge in infections sweeps Tokyo and other major cities.
    • The news comes after Japan officially moved the 2020 Olympics to 2021.
    • In Japan, An Emergency eclaration, the first of its kind in that Nation, would restrict individual rights and allowing prefectural governors to call for specific limitations on people's activities.
    • It has been made necessary by a rapid nationwide spike in cases that poses significant risks to lives and the economy, an official said.
    • In Hong Kong, officials report they may have to impose strict lockdown with people told to stay home, government adviser says, amid warnings of third wave of infections swamped hospitals over the weekend.
    • The Government put Hong Kong residents on notice for hardline approach to coronavirus seen in countries including Italy and Britain.
    • Epidemiologist Dr. Kwok-yung of The Hong Kong Medical University warns of a third wave of infections as mainland Chinese had resumed work with some traveling to Hong Kong last week.
    • Dr. Kwok-yung recommends reinstating the travel restrictions from Mainland China.
    Dark Days Ahead https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/05/politics/jerome-adams-coronavirus/index.html
    • The US Surgeon General said this week is going to be the "hardest and the saddest" for "most Americans' lives," describing the upcoming grim period of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States.
    • "This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it's not going to be localized, it's going to be happening all over the country and I want America to understand that," Vice Admiral Jerome Adams said on "Fox News Sunday."
    • Adams continued: "I want Americans to understand that as hard as this week is going to be, there is a light at the end of the tunnel."
    • Doctors are expecting peaks in Death Rates to occur in some of the hardest-hit areas, including New York, Louisianna, and Chicago.
    • Washington State, one of the earliest hit states, experienced a peak in cases and deaths nearly two weeks ago, and now new cases and deaths have declined for 2 weeks straight.

    Bill O'Reilly: Trump's reelection chances depend on WHEN the coronavirus is under control

    Bill O'Reilly joined Glenn Beck on the radio program Friday to talk about how he thinks President Donald Trump will fair in the 2020 election given the current struggling economy due to the coronavirus crisis.

    O'Reilly said he believes President Trump will win in November if the coronavirus pandemic is under control by this summer, but if schools and businesses are still closed by September, it may be trouble for Trump -- even with former vice president Joe Biden's seemingly declining health.

    "What I've said from the very beginning of this whole ordeal, is that if Donald Trump can get the pandemic under control this summer, he wins. If by September, it's not under control, the kids cannot go back to school in many places, people are not opening up businesses again, he loses," O'Reilly said.

    However, the Democrats have a major problem because Joe Biden ... is tottering. His mental acute is not what it used to be and everyone around him knows that. That's why Andrew Cuomo is warming up in the bullpen," he added. "But Trump knows that his whole future in politics depends on getting this pandemic to subside."

    Watch the video below to catch more of the conversation:

    BILL O'REILLY: Trump 2020 Election Based on Controlling Coronavirus Pandemic by Summer youtu.be


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