The United States is one of the few countries in the world where plasma donors are paid and it is responsible for 70% of the global supply of plasma

This was written by Alex Tabbarok and posted at Marginal Revolution.  

The United States is one of the few countries in the world where plasma donors are paid and it is responsible for 70% of the global supply of plasma. If you add in the other countries that allow donors to be paid, including Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Czechia, the paid-donor countries account for nearly 90% of the total supply.

Countries that follow the WHOs guidance to rely exclusively on voluntary, unpaid donors all have shortages of plasma (hmmm…what’s the WHOs track record like?) So what do these countries do? Import plasma from the paid-donor countries. The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and some Canadian provinces, for example, prohibit paid donors and they import a majority of their plasma from paid donor countries. (See chart at right).

As Nobel prize winner Al Roth puts it, in his gentle way:

I find confusing the position of some countries that compensating domestic plasma donors is immoral, but filling the resulting shortage by purchasing plasma from the US is ok.

The UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada can afford their moral hypocrisy but their decision to forbid paid-donors reduces the world supply of plasma driving up the price and harming people in poorer countries.

I have cribbed from an excellent new report by Peter Jaworski, Bloody Well Pay Them: The Case for Voluntary Remunerated Plasma Collections.

Thanks to Robert Wenzel's "The Case of Blood for Money" for bringing this important fact to my attention.

BILL GATES

 

Thanks to Charles Burris at LRC.

COVID-19: Genocide of the Old and Sick

Mass media, government

The gov't of Italy foolishly responded by sending sick people into nursing homes.  

Bloomberg's Tomara Remondini and Marco Bertacche wrote that in Italy "99% of Those Who Died from CoronaVirus Had Other Illnesses, Italy Says."  That's a Bloomberg headline.  So it's not like some organs of the major media and some journalists aren't trying to set the record straight.  It's just that the connected media, CNN, ABC News, etc. generally explode their stories on the scene with general hysteria anyway that almost any story sounds like it's an epidemic of some sort.  

The folks dying with the Coronavirus were already very sick.  And putting sick people into a nursing home where you've already got sick people is a recipe for disaster, a situation that anyone would recognize as dangerous except for Governors Cuomo of New York, Whitmar of Michigan, Newsome of California, and the governor of Washington state.  

There was never any reason to think that this virus was a threat to young, productive, working-age citizens.  

The idea was that sooner or later, people were going to get exposed to the CoronaVirus and that by locking down the entire population, the government thought that they could slow down the spread of the virus.  But the reality is that outside from a few locations, like New York City, there never was a major surge.  Check out this chart.  To me, it is the most damning of evidence as to where the "hotspots" or dangerous zones are: 

Thanks to Robert Wenzel for the article where this image is found.  Check out the share of deaths from Coronavirus in nursing homes.  

And then there was this:

This is a holocaust of the elderly and sick.  Thanks to Daniel McAdams' piece "COVID-19: Genocide of the Old and Sick."  It's not the young, the productive, or healthy working people who are dying.  If that's the case, then why is it the young who are complying to the letter of the recommendations with things like social distancing or wearing masks?  Masks cover up smiles.  They make a person seem threatening.  Think of doctors or surgeons.  These guys are not your friends.  

ENDING THE LOCK DOWNS SAVES LIVES

Thanks to Bob Wenzel for the video. 

Tucker Carlson’s take on the lockdowns has been pretty good.  I particularly liked his citations of the different headlines that have gone out of their way to condemn states that have reopened, like Georgia. We should praise Georgia for its courage to put risk back in the lives of individuals and away from government bureaucrats.  Don’t tell people to stay safe.  Tell people to stay free.  The Bezos' rag, The Washington Post, headlined an article with "Georgia Leads the Race to Become America's No. 1 Death Destination," an article by Dana Millbank on April 21, 2020.   

Bezos is onboard with Fauci, Birx, Ferguson, Gates, and other medical idiots.  He has mandated that all of his employees and contractors wear masks.  And we know now that masks cause people to get sick and develop respiratory conditions.  Does Bezos care?  Not about you.  Does Bezos stop to think about the benefits of the prophylactics?  Never.  Bezos follows government mandates.  If he follows government mandates, does that mean that Jeffrey receives gov't money or special protections or privileges?  For we all know that in the U.S., major corporations are on the receiving end of U.S. doled-out dollars, while the rest of us rely on the insights and strategies of capitalism to survive. 

"calls [to the suicide hotline] increased from the month of February to March went from 20 calls to 1,800."

Thanks to Bob Wenzel's "The Lockdown Suicides" over at TargetLiberty.  

Dr. Jeffrey, I. Barke, MD, is a medical practitioner serving in Newport Beach, CA.

Dr. Mark McDonald is a Clinical Psychiatrist and Medical Legal Expert, practicing in Los Angeles, CA.  The YouTube video description explains that

Mark McDonald, M.D., F.A.B.P.N., a double board-certified physician specializing in adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry will share his doctor-patient experiences during the Covid-19 shutdown.

DR. MCDONALD [3:07]: A recent tragedy that happened in his practice.  A 31-year-old woman he'd seen for depression.  She was on a cocktail of medications.  Remote history of opiate abuse.  She was due to see him this week, but he received a call from her step-mother, who lives in Atherton, who explained that she had died.  She was going to school at Antioch College to get her Masters in Counseling, the school shut down as all of the schools have from K through graduate.  She had to return to her apartment, where she lived alone, confine herself to a small space, no family, no boyfriend.  She had no 12-step meetings to go to to offer support.  And she was under stress.  Unknown to me, she declined.  I didn't hear from her or the therapist.  She found a supply of Fentynal and overdosed.  She was found unresponsive by paramedics and she died.  Again, she was healthy.

DR. BARKE: But Dr. McDonald, this is a death that has nothing to do with the viral infection.  This is a death that has to do with the unnecessary economic and medical shutdown in our country.  And I know that you're just one doctor practising, but this is being repeated over and over again.  And this is not unique to you, but it is going on throughout the country, is this correct? 

DR. MCDONALD:  It's going on everywhere.  The director for Didi Hersch Suicide Prevention Hotline, who was interviewed by the LA Times in early April, she manages the entire suicide prevention network in Los Angeles County, a private practice, a private outfit basically, and the calls that increased from the month of February to March went from 20 calls to 1,800.  So if that isn't a signal that a tremendous number of patients and non-patients, just residents here in LA that are suffering such distress that they need to call suicide prevention hotline, how many more are out there, and how many of them are now dead or suffering in silence waiting to see me or seeing you, or seeing any physician that they need healthcare from . . . .

DR. BARKE: The mental health crisis across our country as a result of the economic and medical shutdown is quite traumatic.  And as a primary care doctor, I am seeing this in my colleagues as well, where routine visits are just not happening, both for mental health and regular health problems.  So I think it's a tragedy, and we hope the message gets out that we need to open up our economy and most importantly we need to open up our healthcare so patients can start getting the care that they need to prevent tragedies like the one that you are describing.  

Thanks, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, Billie Gates, 

It's true that some folks impose self-isolation, but when governments do it you know they're not just giving you space.

Social Isolation Increases Risk Of Heart Attack, Stroke, & Death From All Causes,https://t.co/kQZfqaalUn

— StudyFinds.org (@StudyFindsorg) May 22, 2020