CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: April 10th

April 10, 2020

WRITER

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: 1,615,092 (up from 1,529,961 yesterday)
Total Confirmed Deaths Worldwide: 96,791 (up from 89,426 yesterday)
Total Confirmed Recovered Worldwide: 362,542 (up from 337,164 yesterday)
US has 468,895 Confirmed Cases and 16,697 Deaths, up from 435,160 cases and 14,797 deaths yesterday
That is two days in a row with nearly 2000 deaths in the US from COVID-19
Measured on a weekly basis for the last 7 days, COVID-19 is currently the leading cause of death in the US
US Now Accounts for 30% of all confirmed/diagnosed cases globally

Cue The Fat Lady? US Federal Reserve Buys Everythinghttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-seizing-control-entire-u-144633849.html

The US Federal Reserve is purchasing approximately $625 Billion per week in US Treasury Bonds, US Municipal Bonds and Corporate Bonds.
That that rate of spend, The Federal Reserve will own all outstanding US Public Debt - Federal and Local - by September 2020 and all Private/Corporate US Bond Debt by December.
The Federal Reserve is already the largest single holder of US Government Bonds...Of $20 Trillion in outstanding US Debt, the Federal Reserve owns approximately $5.7 Trillion, and it is adding $1 Trillion in new US Bond purchases every two weeks.
This comes as the Bank of England skips the Bond Market entirely and is simply printing new currency to fund UK expenditures directly https://www.ft.com/content/664c575b-0f54-44e5-ab78-2fd30ef213cb, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52226482 This is also known as Modern Monetary Theory.
As of this week's Fed Open Market Committee meeting, The Fed is also willing to purchase so-called Junk Bonds from US Companies in distress.
The Fed also issued a new fund to buy US Mortgage Assets from Banks, pledging $200 Billion per month to US Banks plus Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy distressed mortgages that may become insolvent due to COVID-19 mortgage delinquencies or defaults.
At this point, the only major asset in US Equity Markets the Fed is not directly buying are US Stocks https://finance.yahoo.com/news/feds-cure-risks-being-worse-110052807.html
Ultimately, it is the US Taxpayer who is responsible for all of this debt, NOT the Fed.
The Treasury, using the Exchange Stabilization Fund, will make an equity investment in each Fed Fund and be in a "first loss" position, making US Taxpayers responsible should any of the investments or underlying funds fail...
As such, the US Treasury, not the Fed, is really buying all these securities and backstopping of loans; the Fed is acting as banker and providing financing.

US Has Lost 10% Of Workforce In Last 3 Weekshttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/09/weekly-jobless-claims-report.html

Nearly 17 Million Americans have sought unemployment insurance since March 16th, over 10% of the entire US Workforce.
If you include the estimated newly out of work Americans who have yet to seek Unemployment Insurance, the US has lost 15% of its workforce.
Analysts expect another wave of newly unemployed in April as well, as most states continue to experience Economic shutdowns due to COVID-19-related travel restrictions and limits on social activity.
Per McKinsey & Company, the US GDP is losing over $1 Trillion per month to COVID-19. US GDP was $22 Trillion last year.

Bread LInes Across the US - Food Banks Rationing Supplies https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covid-19-crisis-heaps-pressure-nation-s-food-banks-n1178731

In eerie echoes of The Great Depression, food lines stretch for miles as hungry Americans line up for boxes of food supplies.
"Six weeks ago, I had a job making $55,000 a year and could buy my own food. Now I am just trying to make sure my kids eat this weekend," said David Kramer, standing in line for a food bank in San Diego.
At Feeding San Diego's emergency drive-thru distribution Saturday, vehicles lined up 14 deep in the SDCCU Stadium parking lot for boxes filled with produce and nonperishable food. About 1,200 vehicles were served until the food bank ran out - in just under an hour.
"We're seeing as much as a 40 percent to 50 percent increase in demand at individual distribution locations," CEO Vince Hall said. "Many of the people that we're seeing have never before sought food assistance. Many of them aren't even sure what the process is. We get lots of very fundamental questions: 'Do I qualify? Is there somebody more deserving than me?'"
In some markets, such as Baton Rouge, Louisianna and Omaha Nebraska, Food Banks that saw 100 people show up a day in February are seeing 900 people per day now. "We're at zero, zero food left," said Pastor Byron Hicks in Omaha. "It's Easter weekend, there's nothing left to hand out."
Nationwide, demand for Food Assistance is up nearly 200% compared to this time last year. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/economy/coronavirus-food-banks.html

Now the WHO Defends North Korea: "The Numbers Are The Numbers"https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/04/09/world-health-organization-defends-north-koreas-claim-of-zero-coronavirus-cases/

WHO says numbers out of North Korea must be believed.
"We trust all Governments to deliver valid data to our organization, and have no valid reason to doubt any numbers delivered at this time,' said a WHO spokesperson.
North Korea claims that it has zero cases of COVID-19, despite the fact that reports have leaked of hundreds of corpses being loaded into trucks wrapped in white sheets from Hospitals in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital.
Meanwhile, Reuters noted that U.N. human rights experts want the international sanctions against North Korea's nuclear weapons program lifted "to ensure that food supplies reach hungry populations during the pandemic."
It is unclear why the experts would think this necessary since WHO officially believes North Korea's insistence that there is no pandemic impact in N Korea.

All Chinese-made COVID-19 Tests Fail In The UKhttps://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-k-purchased-millions-of-unreliable-coronavirus-tests-from-china/

The United Kingdom on Monday revealed that all 17.5 million Coronavirus antibody test kits the country ordered from China are unreliable when used outside "severely ill" populations.
"The test developed in China was validated against patients who were severely ill," Professor John Bell, coordinator of coronavirus testing for Public Health England, told reporters.
"Whereas we want to use the test in the context of a wider range of levels of infection….So for our purposes, we need a test that performs better than these can."
Bell added, "We see many false negatives… and we also see false positives. This is not a good result or test suppliers or for us."
Nasal Swab tests developed in China and sold to Western Governments reportedly have false-negative rates as high as 40%. "It's basically like flipping a coin," one researcher said.

Models Now Spare 140,000 American Liveshttps://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/09/dr-anthony-fauci-weve-had-a-bad-week-of-deaths-good-week-of-data/

Just two weeks after terrifying America with predictions of 200,000 or more dead, Dr Anthony Fauci said new data shows that only 60,000 Americans will die...maybe.
He noted that early predictive models of 100,000 – 240,000 deaths were already down to about 60,000.
"That's a sign when you take the data you have and you reinsert it into the model, the model modifies," he said. "Data is real. The model is hypothesis."
Fauci acknowledged the number of deaths continued to go up, but that other numbers, such as new hospitalizations and patient admittance into the ICU, were down.
"It is in the sense of deaths a bad week," he said, acknowledging new record death rates in a single day. "At the same time, as we're seeing an increase in deaths, we're seeing a rather dramatic decrease in hospitalizations."
But Fauci said that the social distancing guidelines should remain in place through April.
"That means that what we are doing is working, and therefore it means we need to continue to do it," he said. "Lower numbers mean this is working," he said.

PHOTOS: What Glenn saw in North Carolina was INSANE

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Last Thursday, October 3rd, Glenn traveled to North Carolina to join Mercury One as they provided critical aid to those devastated by Hurricane Helene.

What Glenn saw during his brief visit looked like scenes straight out of an apocalypse movie: houses torn from their foundations and tossed to the side, sometimes entire towns away from where they were built, semi-trucks rolled, railroad tracks swept away, bridges washed out. It was a level of destruction Glenn had never before seen.

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But perhaps the most shocking encounter of his whole trip was when Glenn discovered a lone FEMA crew. It was a miracle that Glenn even spotted the FEMA truck, as it was parked away from the main road without any signs or markers to indicate to any passerby in need of its existence. Glenn and Congressman Cory Mills decided to talk to this FEMA crew, the only one they had encountered on their trek, and see what they were up to. As it turns out, not much. The FEMA workers admitted that they had only arrived the day before (nearly a week after the hurricane) and still did not have any sort of supplies. They claimed that people would know where they were located via the local news, despite the fact that most people did not have access to power, cell service, their home, or even their cars. Moreover, there seemed to be confusion about whether they were to go door-to-door in order to render aid to those in need.

.@CoryMillsFL and I spoke with the ONLY FEMA crew we could find in Asheville, North Carolina. It was stationed OFF the main road where NO Hurricane Helene victims could easily see them:

“We got here yesterday.”
A WEEK LATE.

“They could go online, make a phone call, or use our… pic.twitter.com/IU5I6KAL5r
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) October 4, 2024

FEMA dropped the ball on this entire affair, and it is only going to get worse. FEMA is claiming they blew their yearly allowance on aiding illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, another hurricane is approaching Florida and is expected to make landfall on Wednesday. It seems unlikely that FEMA will be of any use to Floridians in need, and they will have to rely on the aid of their fellow Americans.

Want to help out your fellow countrymen where our government has failed? You can donate at Mercury One and rest assured that your money will be used to step in to help hurricane victims where the government is failing.

The case for mass deportation

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Unchecked illegal immigration into America may be the most dangerous issue our country faces today, and with every day it goes unsolved, the risk of a terrorist attack of 9/11 proportions only increases.

Despite the risk, we can't even touch the subject without the Left and the mainstream media having a meltdown. Even suggesting that the tide of undocumented immigrants may pose some sort of national problem will quickly get you labeled as a racist, stumping intelligent conversation before it can even begin. But as any right-minded Conservative will tell you, calls to close the border and deport the people who stole into our country have nothing to do with race.

In his most recent TV special, Glenn described in detail what sorts of dangers we have let into our countries, with facts and figures that prove that if we don't act soon we will be in deep trouble. Glenn made it clear: we need to conduct a mass deportation or risk being torn apart from within. Here are three reasons that make the case for mass deportations:

Islamic terror cells are forming in South America.

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Congressional testimony from the Committee on Homeland Security in 2011 revealed that Hugo Chavez held a "Secret Summit" involving the Supreme Leader of Hamas, the Chief of Operations for Hezbollah, and the Secretary General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Caracas, Venezuela. It is clear that ever since (and possibly before) there has been a Radical Islamic Terrorist presence in Venezuela. Right now there is an Iranian beachhead off the Venezuelan coast on Margarita Island, where the Iranian government is running criminal activities and recruiting and training Venezuelan gangs. These gangs have used our border crisis to infiltrate the U.S. The most infamous of these gangs, Tren de Aragua, has been declared a terrorist organization by the State of Texas.

Terrorist-backed gangs are smuggling in weapons and tearing through the country.

John Moore / Staff | Getty Images

What are these Iranian-trained and backed gangs doing in America? As you can imagine, nothing good. Just this year alone an estimated million rounds of ammunition, 1.2 million gun parts, 3,000 body armor vests, and thousands of pieces of other military paraphernalia have been smuggled across the border. On top of that, they have already taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, and are now terrorizing the remaining residents.

It's noteworthy that the gang managed to move into the apartment in the first place because they received subsidies through an NGO that was assisting the Colorado asylum seekers program, using money given to the state by the Biden administration in 2021.

Gangs have attacked military bases.

Lee Corkran / Contributor | Getty Images

It hasn't stopped at apartment complexes either. A leak from the U.S. Army revealed that the gangs have launched probing attacks on military facilities within the U.S. Members have been sighted taking surveillance photos of Lackland Air Force Base, as well as firing multiple shots into the facility. Another military base in Texas, Fort Sam Houston, caught a gang member attempting to gain access to the facility. This coincides with suspicious activity documented within the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the U.S.

They are smuggling in vast quantities of military equipment, probing and surveying military facilities and key energy locations, and taking over residential areas. What exactly is going on and why isn't the federal government taking it more seriously?

VP debate recap: A Vance victory

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This might have been the most consequential VP debate in recent memory.

For those of you who missed the debate, it was a decisive victory for J.D. Vance and the Trump-Vance team as a whole. Vance presented a calm, collected, and considerate side of the Republican party that compliments Trump and helps to make their platform more palatable. Meanwhile, Tim Walz had a lackluster, though certainly not catastrophic, night. He had a few embarrassing gaffes and came across as overly nervous, but like Vance, kept it civil.

Both VP candidates entered the stage as relative unknowns to most Americans, and by the end, both men had given an accurate representation of their characters. Here is a brief recap just in case you missed the debate:

J.D. Vance looked great

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Vance came out of the gate swinging, with a stellar opening statement that helped set the stage for the rest of the debate. He delivered a concise yet compelling recap of his life, which framed him as everything Walz claims to be: a relatable veteran from humble beginnings who earned his position through hard work and service. He then went on to deliver a clear and palatable defense of Trump's platform and mission while cooly drawing attention to the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.

Overall, J.D. Vance looked incredibly presidential. He presented himself not just as a capable vice president, but as a strong successor to Trump and as a valid replacement if anything should happen to the former president between now and the end of his hypothetical second term. Vance also successfully dispelled the notion that he is "weird" as Walz called him, and if anyone looked strange during the debate, it certainly wasnot Vance.

Tim Walz's gaffes

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

While Tim Walz certainly didn't have an awful night, he did not stack up well against Vance. Walz had a major gaffe around halfway through the debate when asked to explain the change in his position on assault weapon bans. Walz then claimed that he had befriended school shooters during his time in office. While that was clearly not the intention of what he was saying, it was embarrassing nonetheless.

Another weak moment was when the moderators asked Walz to explain a claim he had made regarding being in Hong Kong during the infamous Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, which has since been proven false. Walz gave a long-winded, rambling answer about taking students to visit China and how Trump should have joined in on those trips, before being called out by the moderator for dodging the question.

Vance fact-checked the fact-checkers

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One of the conditions of the CBS debate was that the moderators would not fact-check the debaters live, but instead rely on after-the-matter fact-checking. But, CBS couldn't keep to its own rules. While Vance was describing the migrant crisis that has swelled during the Biden-Harris administration, one of the CBS moderators, Margaret Brennan, chimed in with a "fact check." She claimed that the Haitian migrants in Ohio have legal status, to which Vance clapped back by calling Brennan out for breaking the rules of the debate, then proceeded to correct her, explaining that they only had legal status due to overreach by the Biden-Harris administration.

Dockworker strike: Everything you need to know

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At midnight on September 30th, dockworkers across the East Coast went on strike, effectively cutting the country's import and export capabilities in half.

Don't go out and panic buy a pallet of toilet paper and instant ramen just yet. It's going to take some time for the full effects of the strike to be felt and hopefully, the strike will be good and over by then. But there are no guarantees, and this election cycle could get significantly more insane as we draw near to the election. And even if the strike is settled quickly, it shows growing cracks in our infrastructure and industrial capacity that needs to be addressed if America wants to maintain its global dominance.

Here is everything you need to know about the dockworker strike:

What do the dockworkers want?

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As with most strikes, pay is the driving factor behind this situation the country now finds itself in. The longshoremen want more pay, and with rising inflation who can blame them? After all, working the docks is hard and dangerous business, and fair compensation only seems... fair. But when you compare the wage of a dockworker, which is around $100,000 to $200,00 a year to the average income in America of $56,000, suddenly they seem significantly less sympathetic.

How much money are they asking for? For most Americans, a three percent raise is considered high, but the unions are asking up to 15 percent, depending on location. On top of that, they are asking for a 77 percent raise over the next six years. The West Coast dock workers recently made off with a 36 percent raise and were considered lucky. These increases in costs are just going to be transferred to the end consumer, and we'll likely see a jump in prices if these terms are accepted.

The other major ticket item is protection against automation. Autonomous ports are quickly becoming a reality, with major ports in China that are capable of handling vast amounts of cargo being run by a single office, not an army of dock workers. Naturally, the longshoremen are concerned that their jobs are at risk of being replaced by machines that can work harder, longer, for cheaper, and without risk of injury.

How will it affect Americans?

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Don't panic yet!

It is going to take some time for consumers to feel the effects of the strike and it is possible that a resolution could happen at any time.

Week one should be pretty much business as usual. It might be a good idea to stock up on fruit and other perishables, but there is no need to go COVID-lockdown-crazy yet.

Week two is when you'll first start feeling the pinch. Fresh fruits and veggies will become scarce, along with other imported goods like shoes, toys, and TVs. Prices will start to creep up as the shelves will start to look a little sparse. The supply of tools, lumber, and other hardware materials will also begin to dry up.

By week three, the cracks in the system will really start to show. Entire industries will begin to slow down, or even stop. Factory workers will get furloughed and sent home without pay. Stores will have to ration items, prices will be sky-high, and online orders will come to a standstill. At this point, the strike will have escalated into a full-blown crisis, and even if it was resolved immediately, it would still take weeks to restore everything to working order.

At the four-week mark, the situation will have developed into a national security crisis, and as Glenn describes, a poly-crisis. Small business will be closing their doors, entire brands will be out of stock, and everything that remains will be so expensive it is unaffordable. By this point, the holiday season will be drawing near and there will be a rush on any sort of gift or decor items left. At this point, irreparable damage to our economy will have occurred and it will be months if not years before it can be mended.

While that sounds bleak, with the election just around the corner, it seems unlikely that the Biden-Harris administration will let it get that bad. That being said, their administration has not been characterized by good decision-making and reasonable policy, so there are no guarantees.

What can be done?

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The big question is "Why hasn't Biden already done something?"

President Biden, who ran on the image of a blue-collar, union-worker, has been uncharacteristically absent from the issue. Despite his earlier involvement in a train strike, Biden has declared that involvement in union fights is not a presidential issue unless it getsreally bad.

So where's the line? At what point will he step in? He has to understand that an economic crisis right before the election will reflect poorly on Kamala.

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