Why the next stage of capitalism is coming

The whole purpose of capitalism is to take a pool of cash and credit and to invest it in such a cway as to actually grow.  No more and no less.  all other considerations are by products of this human effort.  for that reason we tend to be very stingy regarding who we trust with that cash and credit.

The historic problem has been the decission tree for granting credit and that still remains true.  It is much easier to use credit to buy a proven enterprise than to create such an enterprise anew.

The only change that has taken place has been the advent of micro credit though even there the masters are half hearted.  Yet done properly it will eliminate all poverty and make the credit system deep and rich.

What is coming is the end of economic hierarchy and all poverty and robust local capitlism governed through the rule of twelve.

Why the next stage of capitalism is coming

(Image credit: Getty Images)

By Matthew Wilburn King26th May 2021

It's done so much for human well-being, but it's far from perfect. Will capitalism as we know it evolve into something new?

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Nearly 250 years ago, the economist and philosopher Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, in which he described the birth of a new form of human activity: industrial capitalism. It would lead to the accumulation of wealth beyond anything that he and his contemporaries could have imagined.

Capitalism has fuelled the industrial, technological and green revolutions, reshaped the natural world and transformed the role of the state in relation to society. It has lifted innumerable people out of poverty over the last two centuries, significantly increased standards of living, and resulted in innovations that have radically improved human well-being, as well as making it possible to go to the Moon and read this article on the internet.

However, the story is not universally positive. In recent years, capitalism's shortcomings have become ever-more apparent. Prioritising short-term profits for individuals has sometimes meant that the long-term well-being of society and the environment has lost out – especially as the world has faced the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. And as political unrest and polarisation around the world have shown, there are growing signs of discontent with the status quo. In one 2020 survey by the marketing and public relations firm Edelman, 57% of people worldwide said that "capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world".

Indeed, if you judge by measures such as inequality and environmental damage, "the performance of Western capitalism in recent decades has been deeply problematic", the economists Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato wrote recently in the book Rethinking Capitalism.

However, that does not mean there are no solutions. "Western capitalism is not irretrievably bound to fail; but it does need to be rethought," argue Jacobs and Mazzucato.

So, will capitalism as we know it continue in its current form – or might it have another future ahead?

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How to think about time

Capitalism has spawned thousands of books and millions of words, and so it would be impossible to explore all its facets. That said, we can start to understand where capitalism could be headed in the future by exploring where it began. This tells us that capitalism hasn't always worked the way it does today ­– particularly in the West.

Between the 9th and 15th Centuries, autocratic monarchies and ecclesiastical hierarchies dominated Western society. These systems began to fall away as people increasingly asserted their right to individual liberty. This push for a greater focus on the individual favoured capitalism as an economic system because of the flexibility it allowed for private property rights, personal choice, entrepreneurship and innovation. It also favoured democracy as a governing system for its focus on individual political freedom.

In 1851, London hosted the "Great Exhibition Of The Works Of Industry Of All Nations" (Credit: Getty Images)

The shift toward greater individual liberty changed the social contract. Previously, many resources were provided by those in power (land, food and protection) in exchange for significant contributions from citizens (for instance, from slave labour to hard labour with little pay, high taxes and unquestioning loyalty). With capitalism, people expected less from governing authorities, in exchange for greater civil liberties, including individual, political and economic freedom.

But capitalism would evolve significantly over the following centuries – and particularly so during the second half of the 20th Century. After World War Two, the Mont Pelerin Society, an economic policy think tank, was founded with the goal of addressing the challenges confronting the West. Its specific focus was on defending the political values of an open society, rule of law, freedom of expression and free market economic policies – central tenents of classical liberalism.

Its ideas eventually gave rise to "supply-side economics". This was the belief that lower taxes and minimal regulation of the free market would lead to the most economic growth – and, therefore, better lives for all. In the 1980s, coupled with the emergence of political neoliberalism, supply-side economics became a priority for the US and many European governments.

This newer strain of capitalism has led to increased economic growth worldwide, while lifting a substantive number of people out of absolute poverty. But at the same time, critics argue that its tenets of lowering taxes and deregulating business has done little to support political investment in public services, such as crumbling public infrastructure, improving education and mitigating health risks.

Perhaps most significantly, in many developed nations late-20th Century capitalism has contributed to a significant gap between the wealth of the richest and poorest people, as measured by the Gini Index. And in some countries, that gap is growing ever-wider. It's particularly stark in the US, where the poorest individuals have seen no real income growth since 1980, while the ultra-rich at the top have seen their income grow by around 6% per year. The richest billionaires in the world are almost all based in the US, and have amassed staggering fortunes, while at the same time the median US household income has risen only modestly since the turn of the century.

If the gap grows between rich and poor, then instability can follow (Credit: Jay Directo/Getty Images)

The inequality gap may matter more than some politicians and corporate leaders would like to believe. Capitalism may have lifted millions of people around the world out of absolute poverty, but inequality can be corrosive within a society, says Denise Stanley, a professor of economics at California State University-Fullerton. "Absolute poverty is basically folks are able to get… $4 per day per person. It’s a threshold measure," she explains, but relative poverty can unbalance a society over the long-term. Even if the economy is growing, income inequality and stagnant wages can make people feel less secure as their relative status in the economy diminishes. Behavioural economists have shown that "our status compared to other people, our happiness, is derived more by relative measures and distribution then by absolute measures. If that’s true then capitalism has a problem," says Stanley.

Inequality can unbalance a society over the long-term

As a result of rising inequality, "people have less trust in institutions and experience a sense of injustice", according to the Edelman report. But the impact on people's lives may go deeper. Capitalism in its current form is destroying the lives of many working-class people, argue the economists Anne Case and Sir Angus Deaton in their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Over "the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year", they write.

The 2007-2008 financial crisis exacerbated these problems. The crisis was brought on by excessive deregulation, and hit the working class in developed nations particularly hard. The subsequent bailouts of big banks led to resentment and "helped fuel the rise of the… polarised politics we’ve seen over the last decade", according to Richard Cordray, the first director of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and author of Watchdog: How Protecting Consumers Can Save Our Families, Our Economy, and Our Democracy.

Liberal democracies may now be at an inflection point, where citizens contest today’s capitalist norms with greater political intensity worldwide.

J Patrice McSherry, a professor of political science at Long Island University in New York, has observed this change in Chile, for instance. "Social mobilisation began with a rise in subway fares in October 2019, sparking broad-based protests that convoked more than one million people in demonstrations," she says. "The social movement has exposed the deep sources of discontent in Chile: entrenched and growing inequality, the ever-rising cost of living, and extreme privatisation in one of the world’s most neoliberal states."

Those grievances can be traced back to the late 20th Century, when Chile's authoritarian government introduced constitutional reforms that "institutionalised the economic and political domination of the dictatorship and enshrined a neoliberal framework that erased the role of the state in social and economic areas. It restricted political participation, gave the [political] right disproportionate power, and installed a tutelary role for the armed forces," writes McSherry in an article for the North American Congress on Latin America, a non-profit organisation which tracks trends in the region.

Women wearing a yellow vest (gilet jaune) stage a protest in France (Credit: Jean-Francois Monier/Getty Images)

Similarly, the Yellow Vest movement that started in France in 2018 was initially about the increased cost of fuel for commuters, but quickly broadened to include grievances similar to those in Chile, the cost of living, growing inequality, and a demand for government to stop ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens.

And in the US, the political movement which spawned Trumpism is arguably fuelled by economic inequality just as much as ideology. Among voters who have lost out due to globalisation, the Trump administration won widespread political support for its more closed approaches to global trade, including withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and retaliatory tariffs on Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and Argentinian goods and services imported into the US. Even the US's allies were targeted by this agenda, including Europe, Canada, and Mexico.

Economies cannot become completely divorced from the demands of democratic majorities

While one response to the downsides of capitalism in its current form is for nations to take a defensive posture, seeking to protect themselves by minimising external ties, protectionism "is short-sighted, particularly when it comes to trade," according to Anahita Thoms, head of Baker McKenzie's International Trade Practice in Germany and Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. "While it may bring some temporary benefits, in the long-term it endangers the global economy as a whole and threatens to undo decades of economic progress. It is crucial to maintain investment-friendly, open markets," says Thoms.

A central challenge for governments in the 21st Century will be to work out how to balance these long-term benefits of global trade with the short-term harms that globalisation can bring to local communities affected by low wages or unemployment. Economies cannot become completely divorced from the demands of democratic majorities who seek jobs, affordable housing, education, healthcare and a clean environment. As the Chilean, Yellow Vest and Trumpist movements show, many people are asking for change to the existing system so that it accounts for these needs, rather than only enriching private interests.

In sum, it may be time to reconsider the social contract for capitalism, so that it becomes more inclusive of a broader set of interests beyond individual rights and liberties. This is not impossible. Capitalism has evolved before, and if it is to continue into the longer-term future, it can evolve again.

The future of capitalism

In recent years, various ideas and proposals have emerged that aim to rewrite capitalism's social contract. What they have in common is the idea that businesses need more varied measures of success than simply profit and growth. In business, there's "conscious capitalism", inspired by the practices of so-called "ethical" brands. In policy, there's "inclusive capitalism", advocated by both the Bank of England and The Vatican, which advocates harnessing "capitalism for good". And in sustainability, there's the idea of "doughnut economics", a theory proposed by economist and author Kate Raworth, which suggests that it's possible to thrive economically as a society while also staying within social and planetary boundaries.

Then there's the "Five Capitals" model articulated by Jonathan Porritt, the author of Capitalism As If The World Matters. Porritt calls for the integration of five pillars of human capital – natural, human, social, manufactured, and financial capital – into existing economic models.

Capitalism's in-built incentives may need to expand to embrace sustainability (Credit: David Young/Getty Images)

One tangible example of where companies are beginning to embrace the Five Capitals is the B-Corporation movement. Certified companies sign up to a legal obligation to consider "the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment". Their ranks now include major corporations such as Danone, Patagonia, and Ben & Jerry's (which is owned by Unilever).

This approach has become increasingly mainstream, reflected in a 2019 statement released by over 180 corporate CEOs redefining "the purpose of a corporation". For the first time, CEOs representing Wal-Mart, Apple, JP Morgan Chase, Pepsi, and others acknowledged that they must redefine the role of business in relation to society and the environment.

Their statement proposes that companies must do more than deliver profits to their shareholders. In addition, they must invest in their employees and contribute to the improvement of the human, natural and social elements of capital that Porritt refers to in his model, rather than the sole focus on financial capital.

In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance on the future of capitalism, the executive chairman of Best Buy, Hubert Joly, said that "what has happened is that for 30 years, from the 1980s to 10 years ago, we’ve had this singular focus on profits that has been excessive and has caused a lot of these issues. We need to unwind a bit of these 30 years. If we have a refoundation of business, it can be a refoundation of capitalism as well... I think this can be done, this has to be done."

A new direction

More than three decades ago, the United Nations Brundtland Commission wrote in "Our Common Future" that there was ample evidence that social and environmental impacts are relevant and need to be incorporated into development models. It is now obvious that these issues must also be considered within the social contract underpinning capitalism, so that it is more inclusive, holistic and integrated with basic human values.

Ultimately, it is worth remembering that citizens in a capitalist, liberal democracy are not powerless. Collectively, they can support companies aligned with their beliefs, and continuously demand new laws and policies which transform the competitive landscape of corporations so that they might improve their practices.

When Adam Smith was observing nascent industrial capitalism in 1776, he could not foresee just how much it would transform our societies today. So it follows that we might be similarly blind to what capitalism could look like in another two centuries. However, that does not mean we should not ask how it might evolve into something better in the nearer term. The future of capitalism and our planet depend on it.

* Matthew Wilburn King is an international consultant and conservationist based in Boulder, Colorado and the president and chairman of the Common Foundation. Connect with him on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Harvesting Air Conditioning Condensation Could Replace Cities’ Potable Water Use

We live in wonderfully engineered spaces that can now be plunked down anywhere we please.  Because it is essentialld a sealed container with controled access for the external environment, it should also be possible to also engineer the environmental contents and of c ourse we can.  It does take real engineering innovation and effort.

In short it is not easy even when obvious.  It also needs to be done.  We can also see that.

A great example is that in the middle of the desert, such a space occupied by humans will sustain a high humidity level while it is 15% outside.  Just recycling that will produce all the necessary drinking water.

If we could merely separate hot molecules from cool molecules we could have all the air conditioning we wanted without any fuel used.  By the way this happens to be the one truly important tech problems to solve. I would establish a prize and have every engineering and physics department apply themselves to it with abandon.

It is that easy folks to fully understand.  None of this demands much energy in theory.  Yet if your ignorance means startying with one nuclear power plant, the joke is on you.

As a young broker, i got excited about possibly the largest zinc deposit in the world up in the Yukon.  That lasted until i learned that development started with building a power dam.  I am still waiting for that one fifty years on.

Harvesting Air Conditioning Condensation Could Replace Cities’ Potable Water Use

By Andy Corbley -May 27, 2021

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/harvesting-air-conditioner-condensate-can-save-water/

While looking for ways to make homes and offices more efficient, building managers have realized that something as seemingly insignificant as the water droplets from the underside of air conditioning units have the potential to quench the thirst of thousands.

While the drips don’t seem like much, they really add up. Microsoft reports that their 46,000 square meter offices in Herzliya, Israel, collect 3 million liters of condensate from air conditioners annually, which it uses to irrigate the campus flora and cool the building.

This equates to the entire annual indoor and outdoor water needs of at least two family homes.

In the U.S., a campus building at Rice University, Houston, has an A/C unit that generates 15 gallons of condensate per minute, and they believe their entire campus could supply 12 million gallons annually.

Grasping this potential, municipal governments and eco-conscious offices around the United States are experimenting with different ways of utilizing a resource which for many years has served only to drip down the walls of buildings, giving them a dirty run-down appearance.

It’s not the hardest challenge, since condensation is a process that’s quite easy to control and predict. For example, if the surface on which condensation is taking place is uneven, the water will always run to the narrowest point before gathering enough mass to fall. Positioning a cistern or channel under that point is essentially the only major step required, or adding a water pump if one needs to send the water uphill.

Furthermore, many A/C units come with rubber condensate disposal piping which drains the moisture into a specific location such as a yard.

Clever condensation

In Austin, Texas, a place that is both parched and forward-thinking, the city council approved an incentive program that will offer large building managers money if they can reuse their air-conditioning condensate, graywater, or rainwater for onsite non-potable needs.

Bloomberg reports that between two buildings, the 56-story Austonian residential skyscraper, and the Austin Central Library, their water recycling methods save the city 362,800 gallons of water per year.

Systems that go farther—that save one million gallons of potable water—are eligible to receive $250,000 in funding, doubling to $500,000 if the systems can save the city three million gallons.

Another hot and arid city, Tucson, is demonstrating the use of these water-conserving systems. The College of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona uses 100% recycled water in their Sonoran Landscape Laboratory.

Situated on what used to be 1.2 acres of parking lot, this miniature piece of the Sonoran Desert uses 95,000 gallons of water—all collected from air conditioning condensate for the irrigation of desert gardens and in continuously topping up a pond where local wildlife can drink.

Other non-potable water integration features like roof runoff, drinking fountain graywater, and back wash from a sand filter, along with the HVAC condensate will save an estimated 230,000 gallons of potable water there per year.

There are several online guides for how to build your own recycling system, or the basic principles of harvesting your own A/C condensate ,if you live in an dry climate and want to take advantage of this techno-blessing.

The bubblegum misogyny of 2000s pop culture

Can we have a conversation?  We have allowed individuals with agendas to massively warp our culture without any public debate or even second thoughts.  The core culture must properly accomadate human sexuality to accomadate the human biolgical mandate as a natural priority as we can hardly by pass that, but also to accomadate mutual humam pleasure while also suppressing or better preventing obsessive behavior leading to real mental issues and imbalances.  

We do not  know how much homosexuality is driven by misplaced sexuality linked to our automatic nervous system.  We do not know if there are other underlying physical flaws as well.  What do we know about testorone imbalances.?  None of these are voluntary even though the response soon becomes voluntary.

Anthropology shows plenty of variation that was generally more successful than we tend to experience.

The bubblegum misogyny of 2000s pop culture

How we destroyed girls 20 years ago — and why we’re just starting to second-guess it.

By Constance Grady@constancegradyconstance.grady@vox.com May 25, 2021, 10:10am EDT

https://www.vox.com/culture/22350286/2000s-pop-culture-misogyny-britney-spears-janet-jackson-whitney-houston-monica-lewinsky

When today’s 30-somethings were teenagers, the culture was awash in confusion about sex, purity, and femininity. We were postfeminist: Women had already achieved equality and had become butt-kickers with girl power, and there was nothing left to complain about. We were in the midst of raunch culture, and it was important to be tanned and sexy and taut and down for anything. We were entering the Bush-era purity ring years, when virginity would be held up as a prize to be fetishized and evaluated.

Only one thing was clear: There was no right way to be a girl. There were only different ways to fail. And we learned that from pop culture.

That particular moment in time is the object of peculiar fascination in contemporary popular culture right now. We seem to long to return to it over and over, to comb through all the girls who at the time we believed had gotten it all wrong — and to ask ourselves wasn’t it we, the culture at large, who got it wrong instead?

Most recently, such fascination has taken the form of phenomena like HBO’s docuseries Allen v. Farrow, which revisited the Woody Allen child molestation accusations of the early ’90s; the New York Times and Hulu documentary Framing Britney Spears, which chronicled the popular media framing of Spears’s heyday and downward spiral circa 2007; and the acclaimed podcast You’re Wrong About, which offers deeply researched counternarratives debunking the common understanding of figures like Princess Diana and Monica Lewinsky.

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Amy Ziering, who directed Allen v. Farrow with her partner Kirby Dick, says the cultural flood of interest in wronged women is new. Ziering and Dirk’s 2012 documentary Invisible War, about the epidemic of rape in the US military, met a far different reception than the acclaim that greeted Allen v. Farrow, she says.

“At that point, I’d already had done things for HBO and the BBC. I was an established documentarian. We’d been nominated for Emmys,” Ziering recalls. “But all we heard pitching [Invisible War] was, ‘No one wants to hear women’s stories. No one wants to hear stories about women being raped, and no one certainly wants to hear stories about women being raped in the military.’ That’s a direct quote, from a progressive outlet that funds tons of documentaries, in 2010.”

Ziering credits the post-Harvey Weinstein phase of the Me Too movement with the shift in attitude. “There is a much more acute awareness and understanding of gender disparity, gender discrimination, gender violence than there ever has been,” she says. “It’s finally breaking through to become part of the cultural conversation, as opposed to a more marginalized subject that was left for the discussion of a handful of activists.”

Samantha Stark, the director of Framing Britney Spears, thinks social media also has a role to play in our current impulse to look back. “In the early 2000s and in the ’90s, whenever someone on TV asked Britney if she was a virgin, or about her breasts when she was a teenager, it was just on TV and we consumed it. Then it went away,” Stark says. “There was no way to immediately comment on it like there is today. Today if that happened, within five minutes it would be up on social media.”

Sarah Marshall, who co-hosts the You’re Wrong About podcast with Michael Hobbes, also thinks the dawn of social media has something to do with why the stories of the recent past seem so compellingly bizarre and misunderstood to us — especially stories that got significant press coverage in their own time.

“We tend to want to believe that if the media has been on the ground covering a story, there in droves, that we didn’t miss anything, right?” Marshall says. “My assumption is that on the contrary, sometimes the more attention and the more of a press frenzy there is around a story, the more likely it is that we did miss something crucial. Because in the pre-Twitter world, or before we had social media with that kind of scale and legitimacy, with that amount of people who can use it to push back against mainstream pop culture, the truth just gets covered up underneath this layer of mulch.”Left, Jessica Simpson on the cover of Us Weekly, October 25, 2012. Right, Britney Spears on the cover of Us Weekly, November 19, 2007. Us Weekly

It’s not just technology and activism that have changed since the days when mainstream news magazines could cheerfully call Britney Spears fat and get away with it. There’s also been a generational shift within media itself. Millennials now make up a big enough and powerful enough bloc in popular culture to indulge in a fascination with the stories of their childhood, and with how cruelly those stories were told.

“We were just so mean to young women back then!” says Stark. “And a lot of us today were the young women back then.”

The people making influential documentaries and podcasts today are the same people who grew up surrounded by the candy-colored bubblegum misogyny of the 2000s. And there is a certain power that comes with gaining the distance to look back and see just how vicious that misogyny was.

“For me, it was kind of a rite of passage to look at stories that I remembered adults reporting on when I was a child and then seeing just how bad of a job they’ve done some of the time,” says Marshall. “We just abused women for sport in the media, and I feel like that’s generationally something important to look at. What was in the media and the bloodstream when you were a child? How were the adults who were in charge of the culture then maybe not doing as good a job as you would like to try and do now?”

The question of doing a good job now is a tricky one. Criticizing the ugly politics of yesterday is a lot easier than identifying the ugly politics of today. All too often, reexaminations of the pop culture of the past can turn into smug back-patting: a chance for readers in the present to congratulate themselves on their moral superiority to those in the past, to glibly relax into the idea that then, there was sexism and racism and various other unpleasant bigotries — but now, we’ve fixed it all.

Ziering argues that such responses are in bad faith. “The only desire, at least from my perspective, is to tell these stories so that they’re cautionary tales, so that they have a moralistic resonance to them, and that they’re completely relevant,” says Ziering. “I mean, we had a predator-in-chief!”

Ziering adds that good reporting will contextualize the way that last year’s misogyny continues to support this year’s misogyny. To that end, Allen v. Farrow devotes considerable screen time to the false idea of “parental alienation syndrome,” a mythological condition in which one parent manipulates a child’s loyalty away from the other. While there is no scientific evidence for such a syndrome, and the entire idea draws heavily from misogynistic concepts like the myth of frequent false rape claims, it formed a key part of Woody Allen’s defense in his custody battle with Mia Farrow. Subsequently, Allen v. Farrow shows, “parental alienation syndrome” is still a widely used defense in family courts — and when it is used, the court is overwhelmingly more likely to side with the parent accused of abuse.

“Courts are more likely to believe a misogynistic narrative over an evidence-based one that puts the blame on the father,” says Ziering. “I mean, that’s not mind-blowing. We didn’t make that up. That’s not a ’90s statistic. That’s right here and now.”

It is because yesterday’s misogyny is still right here and now — because it shaped our minds and our culture then, and because we are still living with those shapes today — that Vox is launching a new project we’re calling The Purity Chronicles.

The Purity Chronicles is a series that looks back at the sexual and gendered mores and values of the late ’90s and the 2000s, one pop culture phenomenon at a time. We’ll analyze all the weird and confused ideas about sex that today’s adults internalized with their squishy little teenage brains long before they were capable of understanding them, and find the subliminal ways in which those ideas continue to play out today.

We’ll start with the moment that launched a thousand questionable late-night jokes: The Paris Hilton sex tape of 2003, and its accompanying lesson that any woman who is the victim of a sex crime was probably foolish and probably asking for it. Later, we’ll look at other half-remembered stories: what happened to Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston and Christina Aguilera; what we learned from the WB and what we learned from the Disney Channel and what we learned from MTV.

These are not stories about how we used to be bad but are good now. They are stories about how the mistakes of the past shaped our minds and continue to shape them in ways we still don’t fully understand. By returning to those stories, we can bring these murky, half-remembered shapes back into focus.

Heart Inflammation After COVID-19 Vaccination Seen Across US

This is likely a high treshold phenomena that that should be staying below the radar.  wha..tever is happening, a biological agent has landed in the heart muscle and has triggered a strong enough inflamation to produce the visible symptoms.

once again we are demonstrating a real danger from injecting foreign chems into the blood stream.

I do think that the best explantion to date is a failure to suppress paracytes in our vaccines.  Bamiosis in particular is an excellent known candidate which is why our two treatments ac tually work.  suppress malaria and you also suppress bamiosis.

Besides we continue to not isolate any actual virus.

A 15-year-old receives a COVID-19 vaccine at a mobile vaccination clinic at the Weingart East Los Angeles YMCA in Los Angeles, Calif., on May 14, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Heart Inflammation After COVID-19 Vaccination Seen Across US

BY ZACHARY STIEBER

May 28, 2021 Updated: May 28, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/heart-inflammation-after-covid-19-vaccination-seen-across-us_3833536.html?

Cases of heart inflammation in people who received a COVID-19 vaccine have been recorded in states across the country, U.S. health officials say.

Rhode Island, Utah, and Wyoming have each seen one case while Illinois and Arizona have seen two each, health officials told The Epoch Times in emails. Idaho has recorded three, and Texas officials are aware of 10 cases.

Connecticut previously reported 18 instances of post-vaccination myocarditis. There have also been cases in Oregon and Washington state.

The total number of cases is at least 57.

The number was reached from answers The Epoch Times received after contacting the health departments of every state and a review of publicly available information.

It includes Washington state, where officials told reporters in a briefing on Thursday that they’ve received more than a dozen reports of post-vaccination myocarditis from health providers.

There are indications that the number could be higher.

One hundred fifty-five case reports have been submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a database run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration.

Critics note that system is a passive one, allowing anybody to submit a report. But health providers and others are encouraged by authorities, including the CDC, to submit case reports to the system. The actual number of case reports is likely higher than the reported figure of adverse events, because some patients do not submit reports or have reports submitted on their behalf, according to past statements about the VAERS system.

VAERS “is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem, but is especially useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that might indicate a possible safety problem with a vaccine,” health officials say on the system’s website.

The CDC announced recently that it is investigating cases of heart inflammation, or myocarditis, that have cropped up in people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) headquarters is seen in Atlanta, Ga., on April 23, 2020. (Tami Chappell/Getty Images)

The agency’s Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group found rates of myocarditis in the window following vaccination do not differ from expected baseline rates, but group members were planning to investigate medical records of potential cases that are reported to VAERS.

The CDC did not list a number of cases. It described them as “relatively few” and “mild.” But at least 25 of the cases have required hospitalization, health officials told The Epoch Times.

No deaths have resulted from the cases. One death attributed to myocarditis was reported to VAERS in Texas. A spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services told The Epoch Times that the agency “can’t address individual VAERS reports.” Readers can find the full responses from each state at the bottom of the article.

Myocarditis can occur from COVID-19 itself. The condition in rare cases leads to a heart transplant. It is the third most serious safety problem identified following vaccination, after anaphylaxis (severe allergic reaction), and blood clots in conjunction with low blood platelet levels.

Officials are still recommending that people, including children, get a COVID-19 vaccine despite the adverse events because, they say, the benefits outweigh the risks.

“CDC and IDPH continue to recommend people 12 years and older get vaccinated,” a spokesperson with the Illinois Department of Public Health told The Epoch Times.

VAERS data was cited by officials in multiple states when asked about cases of myocarditis.

“This information will be reported to VAERS not the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. We do not have any information on cases of this,” a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

But officials in Washington state and Connecticut, which have reported the most cases, have cited information received directly from healthcare providers.

“We’ve had providers in Connecticut let us know about 18 cases in our state,” acting Health Commissioner Dr. Deirdre Gifford said during a press conference this week.

Some states have taken a hands-off approach, suggesting they’re not monitoring post-vaccination adverse events. Others are working to help explore whether the myocarditis cases are linked to the vaccines.

“We were very aggressive in talking to the provider community, the public health community to say, ‘hey, look, if you’ve got any of these cases, we want to hear about these,'” Dr. Scott Lindquist, Washington state’s epidemiologist for communicable diseases, told reporters in a briefing on Wednesday.

Officials in the state declined to provide an exact number of cases, but said that once the number reached more than a dozen, they called the CDC and asked them to help them review medical records.

Responses From States

The Epoch Times contacted the health departments in each state to inquire whether they have recorded any post-COVID-19-vaccination myocarditis cases. Below are the responses from each state that responded. Several were lightly edited to remove extraneous or outdated information.

Arizona

From Dec. 10, 2020, through May 14, 2021, Arizona-specific VAERS reports have mentioned two instances of myocarditis, although a mention in VAERS doesn’t necessarily mean a case was connected to vaccination. Both were hospitalized. Nearly 3.3 million people in Arizona have received at least one dose of COVID-19.

Arkansas

We are not aware of any here in Arkansas.

Delaware

Thanks for reaching out. We continue to work with providers on the reporting of side effects and adverse events that may be linked to the COVID vaccine through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). We currently do not have any suspected cases of myocarditis linked to COVID-19 vaccines; however, we appreciate the notification from CDC to help guide providers in the evaluation of recently vaccinated patients with symptoms of myocarditis.

The science is clear that these vaccines are extremely safe and effective—and Delawareans who are fully vaccinated have significant protection from COVID-19 infection and serious illness. We would encourage all Delawareans to get vaccinated. More than 367,000 Delaware resident[s] are fully vaccinated.

Georgia

At this time, there are no confirmed reports of myocarditis related to COVID vaccine in Georgia.

Hawaii

Someone forwarded an email from you (below) in which you ask if anyone in Hawaii has experienced myocarditis after being vaccinated. I am not aware of anyone in Hawaii developing myocarditis after receiving a COVID vaccine, but I will check with our Disease Outbreak Control Division to make sure this is accurate.

Idaho

To date, myocarditis has been reported in 3 Idaho patients after they recently received COVID-19 vaccine. All were seen at the hospital. There have been no deaths.

Illinois

Diagnoses of myocarditis are not routinely reported to public health. In searching CDC VAERS reports, IDPH was able to identify reports of at least two individuals in Illinois who had received a COVID-19 vaccine who were diagnosed with myocarditis and hospitalized. Those individuals have been discharged. CDC and IDPH continue to recommend people 12 years and older get vaccinated.

Maryland

We are aware of this concern. We have not received any reports of vaccine-associated myocarditis at this time.

Massachusetts

This is an adverse event that is directly reportable to the federal level (not the state) through the VAERS reporting system.

Michigan

This information will be reported to VAERS not the Michigan Department of Health and Human services. We do not have any information on cases of this.

Mississippi

We have not received any reports at this time.

Missouri

No reports of this in Missouri at this time.

New Hampshire

DHHS is not aware of any cases of myocarditis in patients after receiving COVID-19 vaccine. However, it should be known that there is expected to be some background rate of myocarditis occurring as there are multiple potential causes to myocarditis, which include common cold viruses, Lyme disease, and COVID-19. Surveillance for rare conditions after vaccination are conducted by the CDC through national surveillance systems like VAERS which will then be evaluated to determine whether national reports of myocarditis is above expected background rates.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma has not seen any cases of myocarditis among people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine, per the latest data available from May 14.

Pennsylvania

We are not tracking suspected cases of myocarditis cases possibly linked to COVID-19 vaccines. Within the past few days, the CDC shared that in recent weeks there have been reports of myocarditis occurring after COVID-19 vaccination. The CDC is aware of these reports and continues to monitor available data.

As part of COVID-19 vaccine safety efforts, CDC has been closely monitoring myocarditis/pericarditis in multiple safety systems, including the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). To date, there has not been a safety signal identified in either VAERS or VSD.

Healthcare providers should consider myocarditis in an evaluation of chest pain after vaccination and report all cases to VAERS.

While myocarditis can be serious, it is frequently mild and self-limited. Symptoms can include abnormal heart rhythms, shortness of breath, or chest pain.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island has had one confirmed case of myocarditis in an individual who received a COVID-19 vaccine. The person was an adult, was hospitalized for one day, and has been discharged.

South Carolina

We have no reports of myocarditis cases among vaccinated residents.

Tennessee

We are not aware of any reports at this time.

Texas

We can’t address individual VAERS reports. A disclaimer on the VAERS website states that VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. The reports may contain inaccurate, incomplete, or coincidental information as they can be submitted by members of the public as well as healthcare providers. Because of these and other limitations, it’s important to remember these reports do not equal causation.

But VAERS is an important tool for providing early warning about a possible safety problem or unusual pattern with a vaccine. When identified, these early warnings or “safety patterns” can then be studied more closely in other systems not limited like VAERS, like the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) or the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment project.

Currently, we’re aware of 10 cases of post-vaccination myocarditis in Texas.

Utah

There is one report in VAERS of myopericarditis from Utah, a 25 to 34-year-old male.

I really want to stress that myocarditis and pericarditis are quite common and can occur after infection with a number of viruses, including COVID. And that to date, there has not been a safety signal identified in either Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) or the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) associated with myocarditis/pericarditis (myocarditis is the inflammation of the heart muscle and pericarditis is the inflammation of the lining outside the heart).

Vermont

Vermont has had no (zero) reports of such myocarditis cases.

Washington

Our statement of yesterday is all we have to share at this time. [Editor’s note: Officials later held a briefing referenced in the article]

Wyoming

According to our available information, there has been one such case with a juvenile who was hospitalized but recovered. There has been no proven link between the case and COVID-19 vaccination.

Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber

Why isn't nitrogen used as a method of execution?

There has been plenty wrong regarding execution and slaughter house protocols.  

Using nitrogen for execution could be done with a simple breathing mask.  Switching  over to nitrogen can go unnoticed and the individual will simply pass out and then soon pass on as blood oxygen collapses.

The mechanics will be more challenging for animals, but the principle remains the same and starts with the animal passing out and likely then goes directly to blood letting.  what is key is that distress can be eliminated.

Central is that nitrogen is better than CO2 and most alternative chemicals we should not be using.  Planned death is part of our global agriculture and desirable.  What is never desirable is using violence on a conscious entity.  For most applications, a simple muzzle can be used.  We can even train our animals to accept them easily enough.

What I am tring to say is that this is a viable path forward.

Why isn't nitrogen used as a method of execution?

Originally Answered: Why don't the states use nitrogen for executions?

There are probably many contrived reasons for using non-nitrogen methods for execution, just plain ignorance being one! But none undermines the justification for using nitrogen to stun painlessly and then cause brain death. Another possible reason is the conviction by a society that still adopts the death sentence, that the death of an extreme criminal should accompany pain!

Nitrogen gassing is pain-free and fast and technically fairly straight forward. Stunning with CO2 by contrast is painful. A mild dose of pain from CO2 is experienced when drinking a large amount of carbonated drink followed by burping. The head ache accompanying the transfer of CO2 to the brain cells (also achieved by strongly inhaling it) can, in extreme cases, be painful until it is cleared with atmospheric oxygen.

When pigs are stunned with a mixture of CO2 and air, they become stressed which has a negative effect on meat quality - produces toughness in meat - due to lactic acid build up in the muscle cells from the stress. The terrified screaming of the pigs is also communicated to other pigs that have not entered the toxic gas area. For that reason nitrogen should be considered to achieve stunning for its effect in depriving the brain of essential oxygen and, ultimately, despatching the animals without pain.

Edit: Several months after providing above answer Oklahoma State agreed to using nitrogen for executions. Common sense and science prevailed!

Oklahoma to use nitrogen gas for executions

Oklahoma to use nitrogen gas for executions

14 March 2018

Image copyrightOKLAHOMA DEPT OF CORRECTIONS

Image captionExecutions using lethal injection have been surrounded by controversy

Oklahoma plans to use nitrogen gas as its preferred method of execution when it resumes using the death penalty, the first US state to do so.

The announcement was made by State Attorney General Mike Hunter and Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh.

Capital punishment has been on hold in Oklahoma for three years amid problems with the lethal injection method.

Mr Hunter told a news conference on Wednesday that nitrogen was easy to obtain and led to a painless death.

Authorities will work together over the coming months to develop new protocols, the two men added. It is not clear exactly how soon executions will resume.

Ooh-ee!' says killer at his execution

Oklahoma passed a bill in 2015 to allow nitrogen gas poisoning, or nitrogen-induced hypoxia, as a method of execution following difficulties in obtaining the drugs necessary for lethal injection. Some drug companies have forbidden the use of their products in executions.

An indefinite stay on capital punishment in the state was announced in October 2015 after prison officials nearly gave the wrong lethal injection drug to death row inmate Richard Glossip.

Oklahoma had already overhauled how it carried out the death penalty after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014. Lockett struggled and took more than 40 minutes to die .

Seventeen inmates on death row in Oklahoma are in line for execution after losing appeals, the local NewsOK website reported.

How to grow edible mushrooms in your basement

Thought i would throw this out there.  Mushrooms have always been a side dish in the human diet, yet it is clear that they are easy to grow in abundance as well and do not demand open fields and an excess of feed.

Cooking down a pound of mushrooms every meal is a working food option that needs to be entertained.  tossing a leftover piece of meat on top to warm up adds to it all as well and stretches the meat.

This item shows us that growing a supply in a closet ro closed bin or almost any storage area is completely practical.  We just have been slow to do it..

Today, mushroom variety has been exploding on the store shelves as well and it has become easier to experiment and take this on.

 Food supply 101: How to grow edible mushrooms in your basement

Wednesday, May 26, 2021 by: Virgilio Marin

Tags: edible mushrooms, emergency food, food independence, food supply, functional food, goodfood, homesteading, preparedness, prepper, prepping, self sufficiency, survival, survival food

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Image: Food supply 101: How to grow edible mushrooms in your basement

(Natural News) Growing edible mushrooms at home gives you the advantage of having a mushroom supply all year round. Ranging in taste from sweet to nutty, mushrooms are versatile ingredients that bring a delicious umami flavor to dishes. They are usually added to soups, pasta, salads and other savory dishes or dried as a snack.

Though they are technically a type of fungi, mushrooms have a plant-like form and are as nutritious as many fruits and vegetables. There are many types of mushrooms, some of which are edible, like oysters, lion mane, porcini, button and shiitake mushrooms. Some, however, are poisonous.

Growing edible mushrooms in your basement

Edible mushrooms are grown from tiny spores that rely on substances like sawdust, grain, straw or wood chips for nourishment. Dealers typically mix these spores with sterilized water and nutrient solution containing ingredients like sugar and raw honey. This mixture is called a “spawn” and is usually packaged inside a syringe.

The spawn can grow into a mushroom by itself, but it thrives better when applied to a growing medium. Growers typically use grains like millet and rye to boost the fungi’s growth. These “grain spawns” are rich in nitrogen needed by mushrooms. (Related: Prepper medicine: The golden chanterelle mushroom hastens wound healing.)

Using Mason jars to grow edible mushrooms

One method of growing mushrooms is to use enclosed containers like Mason jars. This better replicates the moist, cool conditions necessary for the fungi’s growth. For this method, you’ll need the following items:

Spawn (in a syringe)

Spawn grain

1-liter Mason jars, 5 for each syringe

Plastic bags, 1 for each jar

Straw mulch, chopped

Lime

Here’s how to grow edible mushroom in your basement: (h/t to AskAPrepper.com)

Add grain spawn to a separate bucket.

Soak the millet in water. Pour boiling water and cover the bucket. Let the grain spawn soak for a day and then drain the millet. Fill the jars two-thirds to three-fourths full with the soaked millet.

Drill three holes into the lid. Cover one hole with a rubber stopper so you can inject the spawn without opening the lid later on. Cover two holes with medical tape, then wrap the top of the lid with tin foil.

Put the jars in a pressure cooker for an hour to kill any bacteria inside. Then let it cool in the pressure cooker.

Heat the needle on your spore syringe until it becomes red and allow it to cool. This kills all of the germs.

Inject up to 2 millimeters of the solution into one jar via the rubber port.

Store it in a dark, warm spot in your basement for 2 to 3 weeks. Do not open the lid during this time.

Check for mycelium — the white, thread-like body of budding mushrooms. When the jars become full of mycelium, prepare to transfer their content to the plastic bags.

Take some chopped straw mulch and soak it in lime water with hydrated lime for a day. The lime will drastically increase the pH of the water and kill bacteria and other contaminants.

Drain the straw and mix with the mushroom spawns in a plastic bag. Store the bags in a dark, warm, well-ventilated area for 2 to 3 weeks.

Check for mycelium. When you see mycelial growth, cut small holes 2 to 3 inches apart. Hang your bags in a humid greenhouse. Your bags are ready to fruit and no longer need to be kept warm.

It usually takes 3 to 4 days for mushrooms to grow. When the edges of the caps begin to turn upward, you can begin harvesting them.

Mushrooms are delicious and nutritious foods that can be used for a wide variety of dishes. Start growing edible mushrooms at home to secure a year-round food supply.

Sources include:

BHG.com

AskAPrepper.co