#and a very long diatribe in my notes app

[gontagokuhara]

[ameliorator]

May Covid-19 be one of the greatest PSYOP ever? Some reflections on what is happening in Italy. [rough draft]

Disclaimer:

This article is just rought draft, so by definition it is incomplete.

I was initially asked by some foreign friends about what is happening in Italy: therefore, I decided to put some information in the same space, rather than having bits and pieces scattered all over the place.

This is not an academic paper, it is more like an open letter.

Its main goal is to push the reader to ask questions, questions, questions: nobody should presume to be a carrier of truth, but we all need to act humbly and cooperatively now.

You will notice that some concepts are repeated throughout the short text like a mantra: this is a deliberate devise, as those concepts are the most striking evidence supporting the analysis.

With this in mind, all the sections need additional depth and references to give breadth and strength to the research: needless to remark, any contribution from all of you is more than welcome.

If someone who reads this text by chance wants to wear the sordid mask of the debunker in order to attack me as a conspiracy theorist, he/she needs to note that all the sources (with a couple of exceptions) are either official pubblications, press releases, entries on Wikipedia or articles from the mainstream media.

Avoiding “antagonist” authors or websites is a precise choice to make crystal clear that all the information you need is in plain sight on your average news sources, and to avoid wasting time in useless diatribes.

The driving force behind the following text is just common sense, paired with an attitude which can be easily defined with the words of the controversial Timothy Leary: «To think for yourself you must question authority».

Please do the same all the time, all of you.

Thank you!

1. An introduction (or the core of this brief article?)

While we are several weeks into this unprecedented situation, there are too many elements that don’t make sense in the official narrative: a further analysis driven by mere common sense and rationality is needed.

Let’s use a holistic approach while dealing with what everyone who still keeps some lucidity in these dire times would eventually come to understand as an unprecedented act of psychological warfare, that may lead to unwanted (at least by a minority of people who still has a tendency to think independently) changes and transformations, which we are supposed to clarify and debate with attention before it is too late.

Therefore, let’s try for a few minutes to get far away from the media-fuelled compulsively obsessed state of mind which keeps all of us focused only on the origins of the virus ("Is it a natural occurrence? Is it the outcome of a chemical warfare attack coming from the U.S.A or China? ___add here your favorite version___?”) and its supposedly extreme deadliness.

The starting point for this thesis is that any situation of “emergency” or “crisis” is the perfect precondition to arbitrarily change the rules of the game.

We will clearly see how marginal in the equation is the virus itself, with its very low case fatality rate and mortality rate.

As of now, we will only focus on what is happening in Italy. Let’s go straight to the point: the draconian measures adopted are absolutely disproportionate, when compared to the seriousness of the current risk. Besides that, they are unconstitutional.

In fact, the series of “DPCM - Decreti del Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri (prime minister’s decrees)” are mere administrative acts which, upon the pretext of the emergency caused by the virus, violate at least the articles 16, 25 and 77 of the Italian constitution.

Unfortunately this is becoming even more sinister, as the government added to the aforementioned “prime minister’s decree” some so-called “decreti-legge” (decrees-law). Therefore, while the violation of article 77 of the Italian constitution is no longer the case, the scenario looks even worse. Let’s read a quickly translated excerpt of the Wikipedia article about the topic (which is in Italian only, of course):

« In the Italian legal system a decree-law (plural decrees-law and abbreviated in dl), also written decree law, is a provisional regulatory act having force of law, adopted in extraordinary cases of necessity and urgency by the Government, pursuant to art. 77 of the Constitution of the Italian Republic. It comes into force immediately after publication in the Official Gazette of the Italian Republic, but the effects produced are temporary, because the decrees-laws lose their effectiveness if Parliament does not convert them into law within 60 days of their publication».

The risk is that these totalitarian measures which Italians are experiencing at the moment, first introduced with an administrative act (the “prime minister’s decree”, emergency-based and basically worthless), then strengthened with another temporary measure (the “decree-law”, valid only for 60 days), might be finally converted into ordinary laws.

This might mean that some important aspects of the way Italians live their lives might be modified for good: beware, not according to the standardized procedures of the legislative process, but through the aforementioned stratagem (through the “backdoor”, so to say).

If you want to have a look at the series of DPCMs and Dls related to the Covid-19, please check the “Gazzetta Ufficiale”.

You would justify this scenario and the lockdown of an entire country in case of a plague, a major war or some alien attack: on the other hand, the culprit is a virus which up to now killed around 3,300 people in China, a country which counts around 1,435,000,000 inhabitants according to the 2017 Census (0.000002 per cent of the population. Yes, you read it right: there are 5 zeros after the comma).

Now, you can tell me that the law enforcement in China is what you expect from an authoritarian state and that the measures which were adopted in order to achieve the so-called “containment” of the contagion are even stricter than in Italy, with drones, robots, face recognition, tracking of the population via phone apps and all sort of available technology for surveillance and control.

An Orwellian nightmare, you would say, but again: for the risk posed by a virus which eventually would bring a few thousand deaths out of more than 1 and half a billion people?

This is nonsensical, and there is a growing number of scientists who is at least puzzled by the panic generated by this novel coronavirus.

If you want to watch a somehow “watered-down” (because it was not shot in Wuhan, the epicenter of the first contagion) version of what is described above, please have a look at this Japanese short documentary on the major Chinese city of Nanjing (taken from an Italian news website, but luckily the video is in the original language with English subtitles).

Moreover, it is now common knowledge that there are potentially millions of asymptomatic carriers, while millions more both in China and outside could have been affected by the virus at least between October 2019 (don’t forget that the virus has “19” for 2019 in its name, not “20” for 2020) and the beginning of January 2020, totally unaware of it.

So what’s the problem now? The ruling elites tell us through their spokespersons in the government (starting from the prime minister) that we have to prevent the contagion from spreading because the Italian healthcare system is collapsing. Why is that? Is it because of this specific disease? Clearly not.

Is it because of more than 3 decades of widespread adoption of the western neoliberal dogma which led to privatizations, shrinking and closure of hospitals, extreme cost-cutting and reduction of personnel? Well, yes.

If you are familiar with the Italian language or you are keen to use a translator, please have a look at this report. To have an additional reference on the effects of such phenomenon in a different country, you can read a much shorter newspaper article here.

After this pretty long introduction, let’s have a quick look at some aspects of this situation.

2. “Simulations”

In recent years, the ruling elites that shape the dominant narrative are telling us that it is necessary to be ready for a pandemic: besides the constant recommendations (which inspire in me more than a suspicion, but that’s only my humble reaction), they indulge in exercises and simulations to assess the potential readiness of governments and international organizations in dealing with such a scenario.

Recently, a lot of talking surrounded the simulation dubbed “Event 201”, organized by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in September 2019: beyond all the so-called conspiracy theories, at least some doubts arise about the timing and the chosen theme.

While their previous major simulation on the preparation to react to a pandemic as a result of a natural occurrence or bacteriological war is from 2005 (2-3 years AFTER the emergence of SARS, which – for those who still remember the propaganda machine at the time- was advertised as potentially leading to millions of deaths, but eventually resulted in a few thousands), this last simulation was carried out and published only a couple of months BEFORE the spread of Covid-19.

Macroscopic coincidences like this cannot be dismissed light-heartedly, especially when even kids nowadays know that one of the richest individuals in the world is actively both predicting scenarios AND prescribing solutions against pandemics.

Keeping on using some old-fashioned common sense and rationality as our only guides, we might ask ourselves: are these the acts of a good-hearted “philanthropist” or the very interested maneuvers of someone who is having a huge conflict of interest, being involved in vaccines development and SURVEILLANCE for decades with his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Going back to the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (and, by the way, am I the only one who reads on their website “Johns Hopkins - Bloomberg School of Public Health”? We are talking about one of the richest individuals in the world – well, yet ANOTHER one1), you can compare the 2005 simulation (“Atlantic Storm”) with the 2019 simulation (the already mentioned “Event 201”).

A video recap of the latter is here.

Isn’t that strange that they constantly refer to the possibility of a deliberate release of a virus generating a pandemic? Pretty strange, isn’t it?

Please ask questions and make your own considerations, I am not adding anything else on this subject for now.

3. Some extremely quick historical references to similar pandemics

The main point here is to give some background to the repressive measures adopted while dealing with the current pandemic and hypothesize the potential scenarios2 in which all or some of them are maintained in the phase following the “containment” (see above for the stratagem used in Italy, which might lead to major changes in the Italian legislation by means of using the backdoor: this is completely anti-democratic).

In this regard, a crucial consideration is the following: the 1918 pandemic (the "Spanish flu3") caused between 17,000,000 and 50,000,000 deaths (other sources speak of 100,000,000), while so far we can use data from China (which is in an advanced phase of the "containment", even if it is not yet "out of danger") for an incomplete comparison with this Covid-19: in the Asian country, we are dealing with around 3,300 deaths out of around 1,435,000,000 Chinese citizens registered in the 2017 census (0.000002 % of the population). You will read these stats on the deaths caused by the novel coronavirus in China over and over again: this is done on purpose, as a red alert for our brains.

With this simple consideration in mind, we can easily realize that we are already going too far with this unprecedented experiment of transformation and individual and social re-programming, under the pretext of the virus.

A little glimpse on the last two decades: had not the SARS, the MERS and the 2009’s iteration of H1N1 been described as pandemics “with potentially millions of deceases” when they magically appeared?

In this regard, let’s use again Wikipedia and read about the 2009’s iteration of H1N1 (the so-called “swine flu”), which had both the highest case fatality rate and mortality rate among the aforementioned pandemics: “Meanwhile, some studies estimated that 11 to 21 per cent of the global population at the time – or around 700 million to 1.4 billion people (out of a total of 6.8 billion) – contracted the illness. This was more than the number of people infected by the Spanish flu pandemic,[6][11] but only resulted in about 150,000 to 575,000 fatalities for the 2009 pandemic.[12] A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[13] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[8] ”

This seems pretty crystalline, right?

4. “... but hospitals are collapsing!”

The concept of “herd immunity” heralded in the UK hypothesized a scenario of millions of serious cases, so this seems to be yet another act of propaganda aimed at instilling fear and panic (please stay focused on what I keep on repeating about China: until now, a mere 0.00002% of the population died. How can everybody ignore that huge elephant in the room?), but in Italy they decided to do quite the opposite: they bring everyone who is showing symptoms (albeit especially acute) to intensive care units, so that the already underfunded and understaffed hospitals collapse.

This is the worst part of playing with people’s lives and emotions: do you think it is a standard procedure to admit everyone who has been infected by the seasonal influenza (albeit severely) to an intensive care unit? The answer is no, due to the limited availability of beds and equipment (which is shrinking for decades, as you can clearly understand with the help of the report mentioned in the introduction).

In the worst case scenario, the infected die in their houses, maybe without even being counted in the statistics of people dying for the seasonal influenza on a yearly basis (and the World Health Organization - not your local conspiracy theorist - estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually, as seen above).

Those poor souls might be put into the accounts of other diseases they already have (comorbidities) or simply be accounted as victims of the inescapable process of aging: there is no clear standard on which “box” to use when the calculation of the deceased is performed.

With this in mind, when you create such a panic and you let everyone who is diagnosed with the Covid-19 be admitted to intensive care, what do you think you will get? A total CHAOS.

Besides, did anybody ask the relevant authorities what are the risks and collateral effects of testing drugs for Ebola or malaria on patients affected with Covid-19?

I would be extremely curious to have a full report on the effects on people who are already sick and/or old, besides merely knowing what are the ongoing experiments.

But, of course, they are feeding all of us with the dramatic story about the pain and suffering of Italian people and the collapsing healthcare system in Italy, without providing even the slightest motivation for this state of things.

Beware, I am not saying that the healthcare system is not actually collapsing: I am just inferring that this might be INDUCED.

Why would you otherwise justify the fact that our “heroic government” did not proceed with a requisition of all the private clinics/hospitals in the country from DAY ONE of the emergency?

Weren’t we all supposed to make sacrifices for the common good, for the sick and the elderly, for our overwhelmed medical personnel?

Well, apparently “some animals are more equal than others”.

Now they are talking about this topic of requisitioning and some regions got ready or are getting ready for such a “bothering” task: why so late? Why don’t we ask such a question?

As we will see in a very clear way in a moment, the average age of people accounted for having died since the outbreak and up to now in Italy is around 80 years. Besides, all the cases of deaths under the age of 60 are related to one or more comorbidities (when it comes to the statistics, let’s state once more that it seems that there is no clear agreement among at least the bulk of the major European countries when differentiating between deaths with Covid-19 and deaths due to Covid-19, i.e. HEALTHY people who died because they were infected with the virus).

For this reason, at the moment we can only rely on the analysis of the most precise data available to us: a good example of how crucial is a higher level of detail could be the study on the case fatality rate and characteristics of the deceased performed by the Italian Istituto Superiore di Sanità4, which you can download and read here. Regular updates can be found here.

What is really striking in this study is the plain fact that only 6 out of 481 deaths in that sample had no comorbidity (1.2%). This means that  98.8% of the deceased were having from 1 to 3 comorbidities (pre-existing health conditions). The mean age was 78.5.

In other words, those people were old and/or sick (suffering from 1 to 3 diseases), meaning at high risk of dying for whatever infection/additional disease pairing with their pre-existing health conditions. This is a clear and undeniable statement, which leaves little room to the provoked scare of “millions of deaths”. Talking about millions, do we really understand how many millions of people could have already been infected with the virus (and come out of it) in the months before the so-called "emergency"? They might have confused it with bronchitis, pneumonia, a severe form of seasonal influenza or simply not have noticed it because it presented itself in an asymptomatic form.

Even the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S.A. indirectly admitted that the virus was already around for quite a long time (at least from the period of the last seasonal influenza, which is what matters now) and they might have miscategorized it: this, in turn, led to accusations from the Chinese government to the U.S.A. (but that’s another story and we won’t deal with it at the moment).

5. 60 million people under house arrest

What is the outcome of such an orchestrated mass psychosis? There are 60 million Italians who currently slaughter each other (on social networks and from the safety of their houses, of course) to defend their theses on the origin of the virus, offending each other for being either a conspiracy theorist or a dumb brainless individual, basically erasing each other’s position in a useless chatter (while wasting useful time and energies which should be devoted to figure out how to stop this).

Everyone is under house arrest, of course (because going out to buy groceries and medicines is NOT freedom of movement): in the meantime, the unconstitutional measures go from a restriction to another, inspiring (or not really?) other countries to do the same.

Theoretically we could (well, ahem, practically we are forced to) accept, obviously for a limited period of time, the prohibitions of gathering and meeting in "public" places, but forbidding a solitary walk in the countryside is unjustified, illogical and intolerable.

All of this is forced upon us due to the state of emergency that is based on provoked fear, which clashes with the basic common sense and especially with the already mentioned data from the Istituto Superiore di Sanità: if the statistics follow the same trend (and there is currently no indication that this will change), in more than 95% of the cases, the elderly and sick (with 1 to 3 comorbidities) die, with absolutely negligible figures when it comes to the total numbers of dead people against the overall population (once more, let’s keep on repeating it as a mantra, 0.000002% of the population in China died), especially if compared to the absolutely many more deaths per year due to war, famine, other diseases and all sort of accidents.

Once more, do those people die

DUE TO Covid-19

or

WITH Covid-19 AND 1 to 3 comorbidities?

Simple question: are those statistics reliable?

Once more, there are millions of asymptomatic carriers and millions more who might have contracted the disease before the WHO and the other big actors in what seems a big theatre-play gave it a name (as an experiment to prove what I am suggesting here, please ask your loved ones and friends or colleagues who felt sick between November 2019 and January 2020) and used it as a pick to change the "rules of the game". For these reasons, I keep repeating to observe and analyse the whole picture with a holistic approach, but leaving for a moment the origin and supposed deadliness of the virus out of the equation.

I call it psychological warfare because by means of this constant brainwashing the ruling elite keeps us in a cage and verbally fighting one against the other, under the pretext of the virus (which reproduces the classic them/us, bad/good, right/left dichotomies, in this case natural event/bacteriological weapon or, if you are in geopolitics, NATO/SCO), while the puppeteers use their puppets that are “in charge” for governing us to impose a totally unacceptable and unprecedented situation.

Mind you: not for the plague, smallpox, leprosy, world war, a nuclear explosion, aliens (!!!), but for one of the about 40 species of Coronaviridae, with a clear pattern when it comes to the case fatality rate, which is strongly linked to the characteristics of the infected (whether they are old and/or sick) while the mortality rate is even lower (as shown by the case of China up to now).

On top of that, everybody is asking for a vaccine, even if there is little or no doubt that it might prove completely worthless (because viruses keep on mutating, as you can read in whatever official source of your choice).

Isn’t it enough?

6. Why Lombardy?

A lot of people started linking the spread of Covid-19 with the rollout of 5G in Wuhan. I wouldn't go so far as to hypothesize a direct causality.

None the less, even almost 10 years ago, in a press release from 2011, the World Health Organization / International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

The mentioned research referred only to the damage of cellphones, at best with the 3G technology (4G was massively deployed only from 2011 onwards): as we are running faster towards the new generation (the 5G itself 5), the link between the damages to the immune system deriving from the continuous exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields and the occurrence of contracting diseases should be clear to everyone. Of course, all the sycophants of Big Pharma and also the pro-technology lobbies will keep on denying it, but as usual time will tell.  

It sounds like a very strange coincidence, but guess where both the Italian company TIM and the well-known Vodafone started the rollout of 5G in Italy? Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Milan (described by Vodafone as the European capital of 5G in the above linked article) and the whole region of Lombardy!

Moreover, and again not hypothesizing a direct causality, guess where is the epicentre in Lombardy? The cities and provinces of Bergamo and Brescia.

What happened there just before the spread of Covid-19, besides the fact that they were graced with this amazing new technology? Well, in those provinces public institutions took care of a mass vaccination against meningitis (they even wanted to clearly highlight that it was for free for those up to 60).

Without articulating the matter with too much depth, let’s keep on using some old-age common sense (or maybe 50 studies?) and realize that even kids (ahem, especially them) know that vaccines have some disturbing side effects when it comes to the immune system.

On top of that, guess what is one the worst and THE largest geographical area in Europe impacted by pollution due to PM 2.5, which causes very well known and documented respiratory diseases? Lombardy (and all the other heavily industrialized parts of Northern Italy, which are showing the highest number of cases)!

Have a look at this official publication by the European Environment Agency and scroll the page for this emblematic figure (pay special attention to the red level). This latter evidence alone would suffice to understand why the virus hit so hard those areas.

All this considered, what do you think about the circumstance of having these high levels of different forms of pollution AND the hotbed of Covid-19 in the same places? I keep on asking myself questions.

7. Positive aspects VS dystopian scenarios

Taking out of the account the incredible restriction of freedom and the nightmarish mass profiling, nobody could underestimate how good is for the environment to temporarily halt all the man-made pollution on such a large scale, and this is something we all should be happy for.

A lot of people are forced to rediscover their family ties, which is surely a great thing.

Moreover, hundreds of thousands are getting used to remote working (which was sort of a taboo topic in Italy until a couple of months ago): this may lead to good opportunities to achieve a better work/life balance, especially for mothers of young kids or for those who can’t afford a caretaker for the elders or any sick member of their families.

Some behavioral changes might be for the good, and we can only be hoping (especially if we are let free to choose, of course) that those traits will stay when the emergency ends.

None the less, there are some heavily dark clouds on the horizon. Are you ready for the dystopian scenarios?

Well, I am sorry: I won’t be your Charon.

As clarified in the disclaimer, I don’t want to get trapped in the counterproductive dichotomy conspiracy theorist/debunker. I am just trying to use my brain and analyse the potential outcomes of the course of actions led by an official narrative which makes no sense (as shown before and as it should be already clear to you, once you start asking questions).

Apologies, but I can’t stop myself from repeating that the keys here are common sense and rationality.

I won’t describe anything in detail, just check for yourself the Real ID project, the ID20206 Alliance, the role of GAVI in setting agendas and shaping policies, especially when it comes to their dream of mandatory vaccines, traceable with a very nice and tiny new system.

Of course, we all hope that no dystopia is going to come true (it really depends on whether we create or not a critical mass of critical thinkers, in my humble opinion) and that one day soon we will all wake up from this nightmare and go back to our “normal” lives: if it’s the contrary, though, please do not say that nobody alerted you!

All the best, my friends!

Sincerely,

Raffaele Amelio

1  Here is a story about another one of our favorite top-10 billionaires, who recently made some additional profits by a stroke of luck (NOT due to insider trading, of course).

2 One easy example to see how they want to make it seem “inevitable”: http://www.ansa.it/amp/sito/notizie/cronaca/2020/03/23/coronavirus-cambia-moduo-autocertificazione.-arrivano-i-droni-per-i-controlli_b6fa411d-89ac-46db-b247 -148735e6eab6.html  

First part of the title: The paper form (to fill and sign and show to the cops in order to justify why you are out of your cage) is changed. Second part of the title: Drones arrive for patrolling. A nice way to communicate it, right?

3 When it comes to the Spanish flu, what a strange case of coincidence (or is it what someone calls “predictive programming”?) one can find in this article on USA Today from December 2019!

4 In another article of the Italian news agency Ansa, referring to a previous study by ISS with less cases (355, on the 17th of March), you can read the following excerpt (translated from the original Italian): «Only 0.8% of the victims had no other pathologies - says Bernabei - while 25% had one, another 25% two and 48% three. And only 10% were under 60 years old. They are the results of an ISS study on 355 medical records of the first victims of the coronavirus. "The fact that photographs the reality well - says the member of the technical scientific committee - is that the real risk factor is that of having a geriatric age and concomitant pathologies, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, diabetes above all, which find fertile ground. This is what explains the excess mortality»

5 The 5G has a peak data rate up to 10 times faster and a connection density per km² up to 1000 times higher than 4G, with a very short reach. In other words, more cells are required and they need to be placed closer to each other than the cells used to support the previous generations. On top of this, think about the fact that the number of connected devices is destined to grow exponentially, with hundreds of millions of smart “things” (in the “magic” world of IoT) just waiting for us to be used by them ;-)

6 https://www.biometricupdate.com/201909/id2020-and-partners-launch-program-to-provide-digital-id-with-vaccines

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[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE ROOTS OF N THINGS

If you have to keep repeating. One wrote: While I did enjoy developing for the iPhone, the control they place on the App Store is full of examples of parents who thought their kids were wasting their time and copy you instead of making users happy. It's one of the founders of Big Company won't be offended.1 If you're going to be good-looking, and its effects have been largely masked so far. They just haven't decided yet whether they're going to get rich for hundreds of millions of dollars given to a small number of expensive ones. To ensure that, any increase in a company's profits over prewar levels was taxed at 85%. Don't drop out of grad school and your startup is lame, aren't they probably right? You're already ahead—$214k a month versus $160k—and pulling away fast. In two cases the founders just went on to do great work, and when you buy the book or film that someone is unqualified is as desperate as resorting to racial slurs. The same way they decide what counts as an interesting problem, I think, is to have a good life for a lot of the advances that happen in programming languages. Pictures of kittens, political diatribes, and so on. I think the tree you'd draw in this exercise is what you have to do so much besides write software.

Now the misunderstood artist is not a static obstacle worth getting past, spammers are now working aggressively to evade filters, and one that most people are insulated from it most of the 20th century meant most people who suspected it was a revelation to me how much my essays sound like me talking. I would not want to make it to profitability on the money you have left, you've avoided the immediate danger. He couldn't have afforded a minicomputer. The best I can say is: if you're trying to solve by sending you email? You could use a Bayesian filter to rate the site just as you would in a casual conversation with investors that stays casual, it's safer to tell them to. At every period of history, success meant success at zero-sum game. And I know it's the wrong way to approach raising money.

Whereas when you hand people a complex tool like a programming language go so far as it goes, but needing to be fleshed out to be.2 You turn the fan back on, and the cost can be more linear if all bugs are found quickly. Someone is wrong on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Facebook have all had hacker-centric culture, as long as they could.3 A round they want a language that's too low-level stuff like allocating memory. Some introductions to philosophy now take the line that philosophy is worth studying as a process rather than for any particular truths you'll learn.4 With the rise of startups.5 To almost everyone except those who've done it. It didn't seem to be disappointments early on, when they're just a couple guys, either with day jobs or in school, though that seems a preposterous claim. Because they're investing in do. All startups are mostly too busy and too poor to be worth trying to understand.

I'd recommend it to their friends. Of all the useful things we can say, which are the most general? The first rule of Fight Club is, you do implicitly solicit certain kinds of arrogance, investors vary greatly in effectiveness.6 To be attractive to hackers, who often have different motivations: I knew the founder equation and had been focused on it since I knew I wanted to buy them, the deal flow, and that Kennedy was a speed freak to boot. This seems unlikely at the moment. It's hard for such people to design great software, but for those who make more money. A complex macro may have to delay grad school a little longer.

The low cost of starting a startup: success or failure—and usually you know within a year which it will be either a compliment or an insult. Different sections of the Times.7 If you try this trick, Robert has, as much as an audience. So I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. When new mail arrives, it is in Santa Clara today. Dilution is normal. Most businesses are tightly constrained in a. Other people have your idea, and what it means to be biased. I was bored, rather than dutifully in scheduled little slices.

Would all good nonprofits be good companies? Calder's sculptures never get boring. The only thing we were good at programming is to build version 1 of a program very quickly. 9091 FREE 0. The last ingredient a popular language needs is time. Startups are so hard to get them beaten out of you. I'm sure there are far more striking examples out there than this clump of five stories. If they even say no. Number one, research must be substantial—and a more subdued version for HN. Thanks to Ken Anderson, and Dan Giffin for reading drafts of this. Ad Hominem.

I can't think of any successful startups whose founders worked 9 to 5 job is hard too, and on foot. So the odds are against you.8 The advantages of rootlessness are similar to those of poverty. Starting one is at first no more than a couple days. 8568143 very 0. Web-based software, especially when you're generating code, to have as little to do with class, as I explain later. One great advantage of the statistical approach for so long. Will statistical filtering actually get us to that point? Notes This is why the worst cases of bullying happen with groups.9

Notes

The founders want to believe is that the stuff they're showing him is something there worth studying, especially if you threatened a company has to give up legal protections and rely on social conventions about executive salaries. When you're starting a company is Weebly, which is the only audience for your work. I recommend you solve this problem, but also like an in-house VC fund they outsource most of the editor written in Lisp, because the kind of people are immune to the next year or two, because the proportion of the most powerful men in Congress, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson.

There's nothing specifically white about such matters.

For more on the order of 10,000 sestertii e.

You could feel like you're flying through clouds you can't tell what the rule of thumb, the thing to be something of an official authority makes all the rules with the Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Edgar v. Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed.

You could also degenerate from 129.

See particularly the mail on LL1 led me to do this yourself. Incidentally, the last thing they'd do is fund medical research labs; commercializing whatever new discoveries the boffins throw off is as blind as the cause.

The trend of VC angel investing is so hard to avoid this problem, but if you don't think you could turn you into a pattern, as Brian Burton does in SpamProbe. Mitch Kapor, is a declaration of war on drugs show, bans often do more harm than good. This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow. It's when they're on the expected after-tax returns.

Others will say I'm clueless or being misleading by focusing so much worse than he was otherwise unoccupied, to get as large a percentage of startups will generally raise large amounts of our own startup Viaweb, and for filters it's textual.

But I'm convinced there were no strong central governments.

[legacyofhopefdn]

Remember when, part 2

This is the second part to our post about our trip to Belize:  “Remember When.”

Hey kids, remember when we spent three days at Camalote Camp?  Saturday morning dawned and some folks arrived from Georgia to prepare for an upcoming surgical brigade. We like it when we run into people from anywhere but for some reason we always get a little giddy when we see folks from our home state of Georgia here in Central America.   As we were introducing ourselves and talking about all God was doing, they asked about my husband.  I shared that Dean would be meeting us back in Honduras, but he was flying on a standby ticket and didn’t know exactly when he would get on the flight.  About an hour later, one of the gentlemen knocked on our door and said that he would like to use his air miles to buy Dean a ticket so that he could get back to us sooner.  I stood there in utter amazement at the unexpected blessing. We had been so focused for so long on praying and waiting on the Lord’s provision, and then this gift was right there and so unexpected.  There were seriously no words I could utter other than “Gracias a Dios.” 

We took a little drive on Saturday afternoon, because 18 hours in the busito on Friday just wasn’t enough.  We were out hunting free fun and a National Park famous for its blue hole.  We found it on the Hummingbird Highway and spent a few hours exploring St. Herman’s Cave and swimming at the Blue Hole. Very cool.  Seriously, Belize is hot and swimming at the Blue Hole allowed us to cool down while having a great time. 

Our visit to St. Herman’s Cave

Hey mom, remember when we went to Belize and sang that song every time we stopped?  We learned this song at the Spanish Institute and since then our family stops and sings it a lot.  If something good happens, we sing it.  If we’re arguing and we need it to stop, we sing it.  If we’re going through a scary time and need some encouragement, we sing it.  Before we eat our supper, we sing it. As we drove through Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize, we would sing it when we experienced a new milestone.  It was very cool to stand in St. Herman’s cave (where cool could not be used to describe the temperature) and hear our children singing this song. I wish I had recorded it there. That would’ve been awesome.  Thank you, Robinson Children, for participating in this reenactment today!

Our Visit to the Blue Hole

Later in the day, our older kids were invited to join a youth group activity on campus, and they rushed out the door and took off running.  While they were gone, a sweet new friend came by to say hello.  When I was a little girl and things happened that were obviously not a coincidence, we would always say in a weird voice, “Well, that’s a co-wink-e-dink.” A smile comes to mind even now as I’m writing this because those words in that weird voice are exactly what flowed through my mind when I met Alicia. Alicia and her family are working as in community development in the neighborhoods around Camalote Camp, and one of the areas they are helping to develop is foster and adoptive homes for children in Belize who need a safe and loving family. How good of God to give me a friend who shares His heart for the orphan to spend time with during a brief and unexpected trip to Belize! 

On Sunday we went to church and then found some things at the grocery store for lunch that we haven’t seen here in Honduras.  We celebrated the Cheetos find and then Riley led the sweetest spontaneous prayer….for Cheetos.  It’s the little things.  

Riley: Dear God. Thank you for our ham sandwiches and cheesy puffs that we can’t get in Honduras

After lunch we loaded up the busito for another free adventure. This time we went looking for a watering hole at the river called Mennonite Beach.  Lots of other folks had the same plans for an afternoon reprieve from the heat.  Families had grills and picnic spots all set up, and mamas were cooling their feet off in the river while they lounged in lawn chairs on the riverbank.  A church sang songs, prayed, and baptized, and it was just about the most perfect Sunday afternoon in Belize ever.  

Afterwards, I went for a stroll around the neighborhood with another new friend named Alicia who works with Camalote Camp.  It wasn’t just a Sunday stroll, though.  We were actually headed to a house a few blocks away to purchase pupusas, one of our favorite foods here in Honduras.  She didn’t bat an eye when I said, “I would like 30 pupusas.  Pretty please.”  Team Robinson can down 30 pupusas in about 3 minutes, so we let the adults eat first.  By the time the kids finished eating, there wasn’t a morsel left.  I heard someone singing the song again as he climbed up in the bunk to go to bed.  “Oh, the Lord is good to me….”

Monday came early. Our driver Don Jorge told us that the Honduran Frontera closed at 6:00 pm, so we needed to hit the road early to make sure we could enter Honduras on Monday.  Leaving Belize was easier than entering.  They did charge me more than I thought they would.  We had to pay an exit fee for each person, and I thought they would only charge the adults.  I really didn’t think we had enough cash, and I wasn’t able to find a functioning ATM machine.  God had it covered, though.  We pooled our money and ended up with basically 50 cents left over after paying our fees.  Perfect provision!

We exited Belize and entered Guatemala in a quick minute, though I did make a fool of myself at the Guatemalan Frontera.  I didn’t have any Guatemalan currency, and I was certain the currency exchange hombre wasn’t being fair.  It was at this moment I decided to stand up for myself and not be taken for a ride.  It turns out I had my math wrong.  Social Worker.  Did you know that statistically social workers have the lowest GRE math scores?  No?  Now you do.  After satisfactorily embarrassing Ellie, Marta, Don Jorge, and all my children with my emotional diatribe, and giving the guards at the Guatemalan Frontera their Monday crazy-lady story, we were on our way again.  I apologized to the kind people at the Frontera and the inhabitants of our busito and then turned around to reflect quietly on what scriptures say about the tongue and being all emotional. 

The trip was hot, windy, and rainy, but we made good time as we moved through Guatemala.10 hours is a long time in a busito, but besides the occasional complaint about somebody breathing somebody else’s air, peace reigned as we buzzed by the banana fields and sweet villages.

Everyone managed to sleep but me, and I got a little bored.  I was following our path on a popular navigation app and about an hour into Guatemala I noticed that I could “update” the app with important information.  Well now, there’s a pothole.  Update.  That up there looks hazardous.  Update.  Cattle.  Update.  Man on bike piled high with firewood.  Update. Pothole. Pothole.  Pothole. Pothole.  Update. Update. Update. Update.  Yeah, I got flagged.  I know the people over at that app must’ve thought I was spamming, but the hazards are real, y’all.  Potholes e’rywhere!

We arrived in Honduras before the Frontera closed and celebrated with photos and another round of our song.  

We celebrated with a quick stop at a restaurant on the bay for supper.  We all donned bathing suits and went for a quick swim while the restaurant cooked the food.  I was starting to get irritated with a few kids who were complaining about mosquito biting them, when I heard Lauren say, ” You know what, Mom?  We were packed in a hot and crowded car all day long, but God gave us a beautiful sunset that we get to watch while we eat our supper.” Swoon….for 5 seconds.  All of a sudden, we were under attack.  Hundreds of mosquitos biting like warriors.  There was blood, sweat, and tears, and we took off running for the car. Note for future travels:  insect repellent of the warrior kind needed for sunset on the bay suppers.  

We made it home safe and sound before midnight, thankful for safe travels, stamps in our passports, and amazing memories of God’s faithfulness that we can pull out the next time we remember when…. 

Thank you to our friends at A Better Belize and Camalote Camp, and for all of you who are reading along, praying for us and supporting us to be here in Honduras.  If you’ve thought about becoming a part of our support team, now is a great time to say “yes!” Please partner with us. We really need the help.  Your prayers and financial support will have an immediate impact on the lives of orphaned, abandoned, and vulnerable children in Honduras.  

The post Remember when, part 2 appeared first on Legacy of Hope Foundation.

from Remember when, part 2

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

That 'Open Letter to Steve Jobs' 10 Years Later - Milestones in Patient Innovation!

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/that-open-letter-to-steve-jobs-10-years-later-milestones-in-patient-innovation/

That 'Open Letter to Steve Jobs' 10 Years Later - Milestones in Patient Innovation!

Ten years ago this month I penned an ‘Open Letter to Steve Jobs,’ calling on the gurus of consumer technology to help transform medical devices into something more Apple-esque. After all, it was 2007, and our glucose meters, insulin pumps and other medtech gadgets were still mostly hospital blah, clunky and difficult to use.

The iPhone didn’t exist yet… But Apple was celebrating the sale of its 100-millionth iPod, the tiny MP3 player that revolutionized the enjoyment of music. Where was our help in creating ‘life devices’ that look good and feel good for the people whose lives depend on these tools 24/7?

Thankfully, my letter went viral.

And 10 years later, indeed a LOT has changed!

Aside from the untimely death of Steve Jobs in 2011, we have a lot to celebrate these days. The medtech industry has awoken to the need for improved design and practicality, and there’s an exciting wave of patient-led innovation underway in the aftermath of our DiabetesMine Design Challenge (first-of-its-kind patient crowdsourcing competition kicked off in 2008).

THIS PAST WEEK, news broke that Apple has a secret team now working on “the Holy Grail for diabetes.” Seriously, it’s my OPEN LETTER TO STEVE JOBS COME TRUE!

And just look at this list of exciting milestones in patient-centered innovation in diabetes over the past decade:

In 2011, the year of our very first DiabetesMine Innovation Summit event, the iBGStar was FDA approved as the first Apple iPhone/iPad plug-in glucose meter, created by AgaMatrix and marketed by Sanofi. OK, upgraded phone tech eventually killed this one, but it was the precursor of much to come.

In 2012, glucose meter tech made huge advances: LifeScan’s OneTouch Verio IQ became the first to ID glucose trends (very 1.0, but an important step); Telcare’s meter was the first to offer cellphone connection to automatically upload BG results to an online platform and mobile app; and the FreeStyle InsuLinx brought a touchscreen experience to the BG testing process.

Later that year, then-Bayer’s Contour Next Link meter introduced the era of glucose meters that wirelessly transmit BG values to an insulin pump or CGM.

At the 2012 DiabetesMine Innovation Summit, our focus was “A Call for an Open Model of Diabetes Care,” complete with a video drawing the parallel between the IT industry and the diabetes industry in the sense that open data and interoperability are crucial -- a patient rally cry ever since.

We were also fortunate to bring in FDA for the first time that year, forging a path for open, candid interaction between the regulatory agency and the patient community. The diatribe Foundation picked up the thread and organized the now-famous DOC Asks FDA virtual town hall meetings, the first of which was so well attended that our D-community crashed the FDA’s server, shutting down their whole system for a few hours at least.

A number of open innovation crowdsourcing competitions followed our Design Challenge, notably from JDRF and Sanofi, and they continue to thrive (see the latest Alexa Diabetes Challenge for voice-activated solutions).

After extensive user research, Tandem Diabetes Care introduced the first-ever Apple-esque touchscreen insulin pump in 2012.

At the inaugural DiabetesMine D-Data ExChange diabetes tech gathering in Fall 2013, the #WeAreNotWaiting movement was born –- leading to a whole international push for patient innovation!

The grassroots Nightscout Foundation was formed in 2014 to support the patient-created “CGM in the Cloud” solution; it’s now active in 30 countries, and details of this do-it-yourself mobile diabetes innovators group’s direct dealings with the FDA have been covered in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Prompted in part by the Nightscout effort, Dexcom got FDA approval in 2015 to connect its CGM system to the cell phone. This first “official” mobile CGM offering is spurring all sorts of innovation, and even a partnership with Google to develop ever-better consumer-friendly diabetes tools.

Thousands of smartphone apps for diabetes have appeared on the scene. While many languish, those from engaged patient-led developers like MySugr and One Drop are changing lives.

Tidepool introduced its disruptive open source platform for diabetes -- initiating a world of possibilities and pushing the industry to embrace open data-sharing. Their CEO, D-Dad Howard Look, was even honored by the White House as one of a select few “Health Change Makers” in 2016.

The homemade artificial pancreas system OpenAPS introduced in 2015 by DIYers Dana Lewis and Scott Leibrand is sweeping the country and world -- influencing how these closed-loop systems will be designed and come to market for the masses.

The annual Stanford Medicine X conference has grown into a hub for patient-led innovation, where healthcare providers and industry folk can connect and work side-by-side with patients on solutions to improve lives.

“Biohackers” are creating exciting innovations such as open source insulin, and a “nano-technology solution” for insulin therapy from this father-son-development team.

Inhalable insulin has become usable! After the market failure of Pfizer’s Exubera due to zero patient input, MannKind Corp. created and launched Afrezza, with a tiny whistle-sized inhaler device that uses color-coded dosing cartridges, i.e. patient-friendly design!

And now MannKind has stated that it’s relying on patient comments on blogs and Twitter to drive sales (which is pretty darn DISRUPTIVE).

And of course commercial Artificial Pancreas systems, that are on the verge of really AUTOMATING glucose control for the first time in history, are making incredible strides. We’re watching closely the developments from Bigfoot Biomedical, Beta Bionics (which just got a huge boost from Novo Nordisk), and TypeZero Technologies.

Medtronic is leading the way with the recent introduction of its 670G “hybrid closed-loop” (pre Artificial Pancreas) system. While one could argue this isn’t necessarily “patient-led,” their customer-fueled drive to get improved tools to market fast is helping us all. Indeed, 2016 was a pivotal year for closed-loop / automated insulin delivery.

Several exciting joint development agreements have been announced with consumer technology giants, such as Google+Dexcom, Google+Sanofi creating Unduo, and Samsung+Medtronic.

Patient data innovators are partnering up to create broader, more powerful platforms, such as Glooko+Diasend.

New mobile technology is pairing diabetes tools with an array of other health tools, i.e. Apple HealthKit.

New applications for continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) sensors are poised to expand the user base enormously, i.e. Abbott FreeStyle Libre and that tiny sensor Google is developing with Dexcom for type 2 diabetes.

Powerful voice-activated diabetes solutions are emerging, great for both the vision impaired and all of us whose hands are busy with other things 🙂

Apple’s Secret Team Developing Diabetes Tech?

And then of course there’s last week’s breaking story about Apple’s secret diabetes project. As the American Journal for Managed Care notes, 10 years down the road from our Diabetes Open Letter, this may be evidence that “Jobs listened.”

We find ourselves in such a PERFECT STORM of innovation at the moment that it’s hard to keep up…

The #WeAreNotWaiting movement has become an international Unstoppable Force…

The industry is recognizing patients as customers and the value of good design as never before…

And at healthcare and policy events, established players are starting to talk for real about how to tap into patient experiences to create better tools…

Patient innovation groups emerging in this #MakerCulture (like the NightScout Foundation) are starting to have a real seat at the table in policy discussions and in designing research, led by organizations like the congressionally-funded Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

By engaging with these grassroots patient groups, manufacturers and designers are able to tap into an incredible worldwide community of willing and knowledgeable patients who can tell them -– like no one else can -- what makes a medical tool valuable for a person living with their condition.

A shout-out goes to fellow diabetes advocate Anna McCollister-Slipp for her pioneering work on patient-participatory research and lobbying for patients’ needs within the FDA, and to former federal HHS Chief Technology Officer Susannah Fox, worked so tirelessly to put engaged and empowered individuals at the center of our healthcare system (!)

It’s incredible to think that when I got started with DiabetesMine back in 2005, I almost literally had to beg, borrow and steal to get a press pass to cover the American Diabetes Association’s big annual meeting. No one had ever heard of a “blogger,” and the idea of a (gasp) patient attending a physicians’ and industry conference was unheard of. Nowadays, myself and other patient advocates are being invited as speakers and panelists, to ADA’s Scientific Sessions, the annual meeting of the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE), the Diabetes Technology Society (DTS) and more.

We’ve come a long way, Baby!

Our patient community should be proud of how we’re collectively raising our voices and are literally “changing the game.”

Thankfully, the industry is playing along, and the big national advocacy organizations are getting on board, too.

Let’s face it, Friends. Our politicians are dysfunctional and not likely to help us with real healthcare challenges any time soon. So we need to step up the creation of our own workarounds/ hacks/ solutions with an inventive problem-solving approach -- and step up pressure on the industry to pay attention to our real needs.

It’s wonderful to see how far we’ve come already, and how more and more people living with health conditions are asking themselves and their peers: What’s the fix? And how can we build it?

Never stop innovating, my (Im)Patient Friends.

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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