Friday, June 25, 2021

Delta Plus of Sydney: Lord of the Roths: How Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Turned a Retirement Account for the Middle Class Into a $5 Billion Tax

Has a decades-old forgotten Cold War generated TV show predicted Communist plans against Australia Amerika and the West?! The Power To End All Life | Genesis of the Daleks | Doctor Who


The Fort Bragg Murders Rolling Stone


Pyrmont penthouse owned by former Nuix CFO raided in criminal probe

  • by Kate McClymont and Adele Ferguson


‘Like an earthquake’: Meriton like apartments of East Gardens in Miami  tower collapses






Sydney outbreak reaches ‘scariest period’ as virus jumps borders

  • by Mary Ward and Daniella White



More on Alternative Dosing

Covid paper for details see previous post, A Half Dose of Moderna is More Effective Than a Full Dose of AstraZeneca.

Addendum: It should be clear that this isn’t about Australia or the United States, it is about getting high-quality vaccine to places that have little to none.


In an extremely rare confession, the head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said the jabs 'don't have very high protection rates' against coronavirus symptoms. They are being used in at least 45 countries.

He gave no specific details, but a University of Chile study found China's CoronaVac jab was only 3 per cent effective in the 28 days between the first and second doses, rising to 56.5 per cent two weeks after the second dose. Mr Fu has since told state media that his comments were 'completely misunderstood'.


…  a new paper on wearing masks by Gavin Leech, et.al., recommended.  And here is the tweet storm version of the paper


What we know about the ‘fleeting’ spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant in Sydney ABC Australia. Commentary:


Here is a video about the “fleeting contact” incident from a New South Wales Health Department spokesperson. It’s worth watching just to see what a public health care system capable of contact tracing can do. (The Health Department report starts at 6:38, but the news reporting starting at 0:0 is good too.) I was watching to find out if the “fleeting contacts” were between masked people; I can’t find a copy of the CCTV the NSW Health Department used, which would show this definitively, but I’m guessing not, because there was no mask mandate in NSW at the time, and people eating outdoors at the time generally unmask. Worth noting that the index case came from international air travel, not Bogan in the Outback (or, in our case, Bubba from Redstatisan). When will the powers-that-be admit that international air travel is a key driver of the pandemic? How do they think that the virus goes ocean-hopping? On the flimsy wings of little fairies?


Experts: mRNA COVID-19 vaccines likely tied to heart inflammation CIDRAP. ACIP’s “emergency” meeting. previously cancelled for Juneteenth. Live tweets of the ACIP meeting:

But how good is the VAERS data in that table? See NC here.


Investigation of Long COVID Prevalence and Its Relationship to Epstein-Barr Virus ReactivationPathogens (press release). n = 68. From the Abstract: “Our aim was to first determine long COVID prevalence in 185 randomly surveyed COVID-19 patients and, subsequently, to determine if there was an association between occurrence of long COVID symptoms and reactivation of Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) in 68 COVID-19 patients recruited from those surveyed. We found the prevalence of long COVID symptoms to be 30.3% (56/185), which included 4 initially asymptomatic COVID-19 patients who later developed long COVID symptoms. Next, we found that 66.7% (20/30) of long COVID subjects versus 10% (2/20) of control subjects in our primary study group were positive for EBV reactivation…. A similar ratio was observed in a secondary group of 18 subjects 21–90 days after testing positive for COVID-19… These findings suggest that many long COVID symptoms may not be a direct result of the SARS-CoV-2 virus but may be the result of COVID-19 inflammation-induced EBV reactivation.” Ignacio: “IMO still more research is needed but it looks like an important research path.”

Covid Delta strain risks spreading ‘like wildfire’ among unvaccinated in US FT (KLG25).

Covid is already deadlier this year than all of 2020. So why do many in U.S. think the problem’s over? CNBC


Looks to uncover complex relationships between companies.

The Australian Taxation Office will use a graph database from US-based startup TigerGraph within its new big data platform to aid in curbing tax avoidance and fraud.

TigerGraph has revealed its partner, Sydney-based Intech Solutions, has recently begun implementing the graph database and analytics solution at the national revenue agency.

Intech Solutions scored the $1.6 million deal in December 2020, according to the Commonwealth procurement website AusTender.

It will form a critical component of ANGIE, a network analytics solution designed to help the ATO’s tax avoidance taskforce discern complex, multi-layered relationships

ATO embeds TigerGraph graph database to fight tax avoidance


Lord of the Roths: How Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Turned a Retirement Account for the Middle Class Into a $5 Billion Tax-Free Piggy Bank Roth


 IRAs were intended to help average working Americans save, but IRS records show Thiel and other ultrawealthy investors have used them to amass vast untaxed fortunes.



…social media users were quick to draw parallels between the Premier’s potential exposure to Mr Marshall and shoppers at Bondi Junction’s Westfield – where customers across two levels of the centre’s Myer have been ordered to quarantine for 14 days, regardless of whether they’re vaccinated or return a negative test result.

Gladys Berejiklian accused of ‘double standards’ after Parliament dinner photo


More Australians Have Died From Vaccine-Related Blood Clots Than From Covid This Year. Of course, their situation is different from ours: “Two women in Australia have died from the blood clots. The only COVID fatality this year was an 80-year-old traveler who died in April after being infected overseas and diagnosed in hotel quarantine.”


Economic Tracker Opportunity Insights (Harvard, Brown, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Handy chart:

The Future of the Economy is Even More Dystopian Than You Think Umar Haque

 

Why inequality matters? Global Inequality

 

What Is Going On at Yale Law School? The New Yorker. Source: “Every person I called to ask ‘How did you get this job?’ told me,’ Amy Chua made a phone call.'” It’s all about the merit. Until it isn’t.

 

Does Evolution Want Us to Drink? WSJ. Make mine a double. And see what the bears in the back room will have!


Questions About the FBI’s Role in 1/6 Are Mocked Because the FBI Shapes Liberal Corporate Media Glenn Greenwald. “And that’s why I’m turning you in.

 

‘That Is Actually Bollocks’: 20 Propaganda Horrors From 20 Years of Media Lens – Part 1Media Lens (MA). Part 2.


Not All Labor Actions Aid the Working ClassJacobin. Commentary:



Weekend Long Read: 985 Issues With Finding a Spouse in China Caixin Global. Paywalled, but via Michael Pettis: “In an uncertain society in which social classes are becoming more rigid and expectations increasingly difficult to fulfill, it is challenging to move up the social ladder and devastating to slip down.” Doesn’t seem like what The Bearded One had in mind…. 

CIA is “scared sh—ss” of DIA’s Chinese defector.Sic Semper Tyrannis (ctlieee). Interesting: “This man, as Chinese counter-intelligence boss looked around the IC and decided that he was most likely to survive an internal leak if he defected to DIA. That means that in spite of the fact that DIA had an internal Chinese mole (recently arrested at DIA request by the FBI), the rest of the agencies are worse in the level in Chinese intelligence penetration not only of their analytic people but also of their operations staff.” Or he has nothing to fear because he’s a plant.