Friday, April 17, 2015

Last Year's Ebola Crisis: A $1.4 Billion Scam?



Remember the “Ebola scare” last summer? As usual, it was government hype, aided and abetted by a compliant mainstream media. As it turns out, USAID spent $1.4 billion building treatment centers that served a total of 28 patients. Here’s the Ron Paul Liberty Report taking on this scam." 

Another report says that:
USAID spent $1.4 billion constructing treatment centers in Africa but nine out of the 11 centers did not treat a single patient. The locals using hygienic products and traditional methods solved the crisis before the US top-down approach. But plenty of contractors did very well in this boondoggle!"
That the Ebola "epidemic" is a hoax and a scam is no surprise. Not at all. Fear sells, and fear is government's primary sales pitch.  So gov't and media join efforts to scare everybody only to find out that it was a scam used to provide a military presence in Africa.  The military looks a lot better if they can paint themselves as freedom fighters or rescuers of innocents from a horrible disease than invaders.  Somebody made millions: $1.4 billion taxes got wasted.  
Here's the gov't view:
Shawn Helton at 21st Century Wire provides insightful background on the ebola crisis as a government hoax.  If it is a hoax, which it fully appears to be, then to what end--make money, scare people, create a faux crisis to put the U.S. military on the ground in African countries?  Let's read some and find out. 

Helton writes:
Following Spencer’s case, [states] like New York, New Jersey and Illinois didn't waste any time by issuing mandatory quarantines as was the case in the highly publicized civil rights battle involving nurse Kaci Hickox, who as it turns out, did not have a fever or any signs of viral illness upon returning from Sierra Leone on October 24th.  Here's a YouTube clip of Hickox being interview by Candy Crowley on CNN's State of the Union on October 26th discussing the quarantine she was forced to undergo eventhough she was asymptomatic.
 
In the interview above, Hickox recommends that we have to be very careful letting politicians making healthcare decisions.  I couldn't agree with her more.  

Helton continues, "Both the mainstream media and many alternative media outlets seemed to be giving in to the manufactured frenzy of fear concerning nurse Hickox. Some news outlets were seen promoting the idea of a quarantine without any evidence that nurse Hickox was sick by digging up Hickox’s associations. However, in a moment of constitutional clarity, Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere upheld Hickox’s individual rights, lifting the unjustified quarantine by stating the following:

“The court is fully aware of the misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information being spread from shore to shore in our country with respect to Ebola,” continuing, he clarified his decision, The court is fully aware that people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational."


FINANCIAL ANGLE
Whereas Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams highlight the military-industrial angle, Helton tries to expose the financial angle to the ebola scare.  

Ebola predictions have gone afoul
According to the Associated Press, predicted simulations modeled by Risk Management Solutions (RMS), have projected that there could be between 15-130 new cases of Ebola in the US by December 2014. In March 2012, it was reported that RMS and the RAND Corporation had joined up to launch a new company called Praedicat, Inc., a consulting services firm dealing with catastrophic management for the “casualty insurance industries with a particular focus on liability risks,” as reported by Artemis.bm.

As stated on Rand.org, Hemant Shahthe president and CEO of RMS, who is also the director of Praedicat, was quoted as saying that: 

“RMS and RAND, and now Praedicat, are excited to extend this transformation to the casualty insurance market, taking it to the leading edge of an industry trend of deeply embedding analytics and models to increase risk-adjusted profitability.”

Pharmaceutical companies aren’t the only ones who stand to benefit from a large viral outbreak, here you can see how the research and insurance side of things stand to grow business operations as well – over perceived liability through modeling analytics.

In a recent Business Wire article, it was reported that RMS had stated that the, Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa has the potential to be the most deadly infectious disease event since the 1918 flu pandemic,” continuing, it was then reported that according to RMS modeling, “the severity of the outbreak will continue to multiply, with the total number of new cases approximately doubling each month.”

Due to RMS’s bold claims, I wanted to take another look at the back to back comparison of Ebola cases provided by the Liberian Daily Observer
, a report that we covered at 21WIRE two weeks ago:

This report outlines a rapid decline in Ebola-listed cases in Liberia from March 22, 2014, to October 17, 2014, directly contradicting the claims of RMS.  


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