COVID-19 Derangement Syndrome: A World Gone Mad
Authored by Percy Carlton for the Saker Blog,
The whole world has gone mad with what I call Covid-19 Derangement Syndrome (CDS).
I define it as an acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in response to the Covid-19 Corona Virus pandemic. The infection is particularly prevalent among the media and the government officials of the world.
Human beings fear what they do not understand and that fear causes them to behave in irrational and destructive ways. The current Covid-19 pandemic is a perfect example of that. I don’t need to describe the paranoia and economic destruction to you because you can see it with your own two eyes everywhere you look. Both the media and the world’s governments are fueling the panic – the media with their hysterical 24/7 coverage and the governments with their draconian police state actions.
I feel like the man in the following cartoon.
I am doomed to helplessly stand by and watch the entire world commit economic suicide for no good reason. At first glance this may seem like a shocking and callous statement but do not mistake this as support for the view that the government should stand back and let the private sector take care of the problem. I have no problem with a strong authoritarian central government response as long as it is reasonable and wise. The current government response is neither.
Do Nothing VS Shut Everything Down
The current debate about what governments should do seems to be limited to two options: Do nothing and let the virus run its course or use authoritarian methods to quarantine and restrict the movement of citizens within and across state and national borders. The former will result in many people unnecessarily dying and the latter will save lives but is already resulting in a catastrophic worldwide economic collapse with repercussions that will last for years. It is very narrow thinking to think that those are the only two options that exist. There is always another way. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a solution to the COVID-19 virus problem that would save lives and not result in a worldwide economic Armageddon? Such a solution exists and I will lay it out for you in this article.
First let’s define the problem: A highly contagious virus is spreading around the globe and killing people. Governments should be responsible for protecting their citizens so they must take action. But what actions should they take? That is an important question that must be carefully answered, but only after much research and consideration of all options. If we act rashly and arrive at the wrong answer people will die and/or lives will be destroyed by a global economic depression.
Let’s set aside the fear and hysteria and calmly use the Scientific Method to solve our problem. But I must first make a digression about science.
Three Kinds of Science
Did you know there are three kinds of science? Most folks can’t tell the difference between them and are therefore easily misled. The first two are pseudoscience; the third is real science. There is a significant amount of overlap between the first two although they do have enough of the third mixed in to give them the appearance of credibility.
1) Agenda based science – This type is practiced by people with an agenda. They are blinded by their presuppositions and it results in them twisting, distorting, and sometimes outright lying about their studies, experiments, and data. The people that practice this kind of science are not necessarily evil. They just sincerely but blindly believe something that “just ain’t so.” They think they are helping the world but are instead causing it much harm.
2) Bought and paid for corporate science – This type is practiced by scientific mercenaries who shamelessly produce studies that support the goals of whoever is paying them. Many of these folks are downright evil in my opinion. Much of what passes as “science” these days is of this type.
3) Real science – This type of scientist seeks the truth regardless of what it is. If the scientist has a presupposition they will quickly abandon it if their research does not support it. They will tirelessly search for, support and proclaim the truth even if it results in them being ostracized by the scientific community or persecuted by the government.
The Scientific Method
Step One – Purpose – State the Problem
We have already defined our current problem as a virus that is killing people all over the world, but we have not stated our purpose and objectives. Our main purpose and objectives should be to minimize loss of life and damage to the world economy. These objectives are both very important and are not mutually exclusive regardless of what our governments seem to think.
Step Two – Research – Find Out About the Topic
I’m not going to spend much time discussing something you can easily research on the internet. There are plenty of articles in scientific journals and on science websites. Here is one example: How does the new coronavirus compare with the flu? I suggest you conduct your own independent research instead of getting your information from the hysterical media or an armchair doctor.
Although there are some important differences between the seasonal flu and Covid-19, there are enough similarities that I believe we can find a solution to the problem by applying general medical principles relating to viruses. The entire world did not shut down for the many local and worldwide viral outbreaks we have had in the past 20 years such as SARS, Ebola, Zika, MERS, H5N1 (bird) and H1N1 (swine). There was no need to shut it down for this one.
We all know about the infection and death rates that vary widely around the world but you may not know why. Italy is pointed to by the alarmists as justification for the police state shutdown of entire states and countries so let’s take a closer look at it.
The single largest factor that determines the mortality rate is the health of the person at the time they contract the virus. The symptoms are mild for the vast majority of healthy people that become infected. It is well established that the people with the greatest risk of death are those with a weakened or compromised immune system. The death rate increases exponentially with age precisely because of the decrease in immune function that accompanies the aging process. According to an Italian Government Study 99% of their Covid-19 fatalities were already sick and half were diagnosed with 3 or more diseases.
Here are some excerpts from a Bloomberg article on the study:
“The median age of the infected is 63 but most of those who die are older. The average age of those who’ve died from the virus in Italy is 79.5. As of March 17, 17 people under 50 had died from the disease. All of Italy’s victims under 40 have been males with serious existing medical conditions.”
“While data released Tuesday point to a slowdown in the increase of cases, with a 12.6% rise, a separate study shows Italy could be underestimating the real number of cases by testing only patients presenting symptoms.”
“According to the GIMBE Foundation, about 100,000 Italians have contracted the virus, daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported. That would bring back the country’s death rate closer to the global average of about 2%.”
A huge factor that affects transmission rates is cultural customs. Getting the locals to alter their cultural customs at funerals is one of the four practices that flattened the Ebola epidemic curve in West Africa in 2013-2016. Italy has an aging population that has a cultural tradition of cheek kissing. Is it a great mystery why their death rate is so high?
It is probable that the 2-3% global average of the death rate is wildly over inflated due a high false negative rate for the current tests. And what about the many thousands or maybe even millions of people who may have contracted the virus and were not tested because the symptoms were so mild? Several weeks ago a strange virus ran through my family and a number of my co-workers. We felt horrible for a few days but recovered quickly. My daughter got the worst symptoms but tested negative for the flu. How do we know that it was not Covid-19 or another corona virus? Some of the alarmists such as Imperial College London’s Neil Ferguson are now beginning to back off of their doom and gloom predictions. The phrase “Lies, damned lies and statistics” applies here. The infection rate and death percentage numbers are unreliable. The only statistic that is close to accurate is the number of deaths. Let’s focus our efforts on reducing that number.
Sun Tzu, Firefighters, Preppers, and Floridians
Let’s continue to gather information by getting some advice from Sun Tzu, firefighters, preppers, and Floridians. After that I will tie it all together for you so that it will make sense.
Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu famously said in The Art of War “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
The world’s governments are fighting a battle against an “enemy” (the Covid-19 virus) they do not understand. Neither do they understand “themselves,” which in this case I will consider to be the human body. This is a battle they will not win. They rushed into it blindly with little knowledge and preparation and the results so far are not pretty. The current battle should be over in a few months but the enemy will likely be back next year and/or the year after that. Will we know our enemy and know ourselves better before the next battle? I sincerely hope so.
But is treating the Covid-19 virus like an enemy that needs to be destroyed at all costs the right approach?
War on Covid-19
The USA has been at war in one form or another since its inception. There have been countless shooting wars but there has also been The War On Drugs, The War On Cancer, The War On Poverty, The War On Terrorism, The War On Global Warming, etc. Have any of these wars resulted in the eradication of the object on which the war was declared? No. All of these “wars” are foolish and misguided attempts at eradicating something that you cannot eradicate. They will always be with us. We have wasted untold trillions of dollars on these wars and have very little to show for it. The results of the current “War On Covid-19” will not be much different. We need to take a different approach and stop blindly declaring war on something we do not understand.
Trump and other politicians are using the language of war when speaking about their country’s efforts to “fight” Covid-19. That should make us very wary. When the USA declares war on anything we can expect several things to happen:
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We will go deeper in debt
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Vast amount of money will be wasted and given away to corrupt corporations
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The US Constitution will be further trampled and more rights and freedoms will be taken away
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The people will suffer
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We will lose the war
Firefighters
I am a firefighter/paramedic for a large city in the State of Florida in the USA. Every time something bad happens firefighters are called to mitigate the situation. Heart attacks, Covid-19 patients, car wrecks, and hazardous material leaks/spills are among the situations we respond to, but for this example we will use fire. Firefighters do not treat fire as the enemy. We do not declare war on it and try to stamp out every single flame in our jurisdiction. We understand it to be a naturally occurring phenomenon that can be very destructive and deadly if it is allowed to grow out of control. We do not fear fire because we know it well and we know ourselves well. We do have a healthy respect for it because we frequently see the death and destruction it can cause. When the alarm sounds we calmly but aggressively go about mitigating the fire before it grows out of control and destroys both lives and property. We are well trained and well prepared with the best equipment and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) money can buy. We have several different methods we can use to put out a fire but the simplest and most effective extinguishing agent is plain old cheap and abundant water. If a sufficient amount of water is applied to the fire in its earliest stages, it will be extinguished with minimal damage to the structure. But if we are called too late and the fire grows out of control before we arrive, the building may be completely destroyed.
Firefighters also educate the public on fire safety. We teach them how to prevent fires and what to do if they occur. I will return to this analogy later but for now the general lesson from firefighters is that the key to mitigating a potentially life and property destroying fire is knowledge, training and equipment. This allows us to apply the right extinguishing agent early enough and in sufficient quantities to put out the fire before the building burns down.
Preppers
I am an amateur prepper, not the “doomsday” type. Maybe it’s because I took the Boy Scout motto “Be Prepared” seriously or maybe it’s because I love the Biblical story of Joseph saving “the world” from starvation due to famine. In any case, this practice of being prepared has served my family well. When the mob of unprepared citizens began cleaning out the stores recently there was not much I had to run out and buy. (Although I was regrettably almost out of toilet paper.) I already had a freezer full of meat and even a box of N95 masks. Preppers spend time thinking about different scenarios that could happen and then prepare for them. Some do it out of fear but most do it because we know these things will happen to some degree at some point and we want to lessen the impact of these events on our family. We do not want to be dependent on the government to save us. We want to be in the position to help other people and not be a burden on them.
Floridians
Floridians are accustomed to preparing for hurricanes. It is an annual occurrence. We don’t panic because we know the enemy well and it is usually not as bad as it could be. We have an advantage over the folks who live in the Tornado Belt because we have plenty of advance notice that the storm is coming. Preparing for the Covid-19 virus to hit looked and felt like it does when we are preparing for a hurricane. We know it is coming but we do not know exactly when and where it will strike or how bad it will be. We all go out at the same time right before the storm and buy the supplies we need to weather the storm and get us through the aftermath. It always results in the store shelves being cleaned out of certain items. Our advice to you is to emulate our calm manner of preparation but do not emulate our practice of waiting until the last moment to obtain the supplies we need. The best approach is to stock up before storm season arrives.
Step 3 – Hypothesis – Predict the Outcome to the Problem
The doomsday outcomes predicted by the hysterical media and our clueless government officials are fatally flawed due to linear thinking. This is particularly prevalent in the West because the Western mind thinks in a linear manner – they act as if the trend in motion will continue on in the same direction indefinitely. The trend always changes. It is the Creator’s way. Cycles are the very foundation on which the universe was built. It is how energy moves. All viral outbreaks peak and then subside. This one will not be any different. Because the primary transmission route appears to be aerosolized droplets suspended in the air due to talking, coughing, and sneezing, the infection rate will drop dramatically as the air becomes warmer and moister. Airborne viruses love cool and dry air. Towards the end of the article I will be offering my predictions and proposed solutions.
Steps 4, 5, and 6
The world is in the midst of a huge quarantine experiment right now that we have rushed into without adequately stating our purpose and researching our options. In the aftermath we will be analyzing the results and coming to conclusions. Like the aftermath to any other crisis such as 911, most of the official government analysis will be propagandized and used to further their political agendas. We will be deluged with pseudoscience, lies, damned lies and statistics. Truth seekers must use real science to sift through the B.S. and find the truth just like we had to do with 911. Let us hope that the people of the world do not fall for the propaganda and “give up essential liberty to purchase a little safety.” One of my favorite quotes is by Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” The government officials of the world know a lot that “just ain’t so.” Unfortunately that “knowledge” is what they base their decisions on.
The World in Turmoil
The world is in fear driven turmoil right now because of the following reasons:
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Ignorance: Our leaders are completely ignorant about how the human body works and are relying on guidance from a conventional medical system that is rife with agenda and corporate driven pseudoscience.
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Poor or non-existent planning and training: This is self evident and seems to apply to most countries.
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Narrow thinking: The response is the same all over the world – mass quarantines, isolation, and shutting down of commerce and travel. No country seems to be taking a different approach.
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Incompletely defining the problem: No government seems to be giving any serious consideration to how they can minimize the economic damage that their solution to the problem is causing. Yes, many governments are throwing vast amounts of money at the problem by creating debt based money but does that ever really work?
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Treating the Covid-19 pandemic like a war that needs to be waged instead of a recurring problem that needs to be properly mitigated with the right tools and approaches for the job: The USA’s war on Covid-19 will be about as successful as the USA’s War on Cancer has been.
The Cure For Covid-19
The cure for Covid-19 already exists so there is no need to look to the pharmaceutical industry to save us. It is your body’s own immune system. Instead of destroying the world economy in knee-jerk reactionary style maybe the world’s governments should be finding ways to improve the health of their citizens. We have already established that this virus kills the elderly and the immune compromised and has mild effects on the healthy. We should be focusing on the death rate, not the infection rate. Many people get sick with a virus a few times a year and the world economy doesn’t shut down.
I could write an entire series of articles on ways you can improve your health and immune system to the point that the Covid-19 virus would be only a minor irritation to you but this is not the forum for that. But I will tell you about the closest thing we have to a “magic bullet” and how the Chinese are using it to mitigate the virus.
After approving several studies of using intravenous vitamin C for the treatment of Covid-19, on March 1st the Chinese Journal of Infectious Diseases (which is hosted by the Shanghai Medical Association) pre-published the “Expert Consensus on Comprehensive Treatment of Coronavirus in Shanghai 2019.” Among its treatment recommendations was the following:
“Prevention and treatment of cytokine storm: It is recommended to use large doses of vitamin C and unfractionated heparin. Large doses of vitamin C are injected intravenously at a dose of 100 to 200 mg / kg per day. The duration of continuous use is to significantly improve the oxygenation index.”
China must be using it very extensively because in February they shipped 50 tons of it to Hubei Province, the capital city of which is Wuhan. No wonder turned things around so quickly at the epicenter of the outbreak.
Vitamin C: The Magic Bullet for Inflammation
Inflammation is the term we use to describe the body’s immune system response to injury or a foreign invader such as a virus or bad bacteria. It is at the root of all medical problems and diseases. When the immune system is overwhelmed, inflammation rages out of control. In the case of Covid-19 there is an overwhelming amount of inflammation in the lungs that leads to pneumonia, sepsis and death if the inflammatory fires are not quenched. This normally only happens in people with compromised immune systems. An optimally functioning immune system in a healthy person will easily mitigate the virus before it progresses to pneumonia. There are exceptions of course, but they are few.
We now return to my firefighter analogy. We can easily extinguish a fire if we arrive on scene while it is still in its incipient stage. A small booster line or even a 2.5 gallon fire extinguisher is all that is needed. If our response is delayed the fire will grow exponentially to the point that is not safe to enter the building. We then apply very large streams of water from the outside and do not enter the building until after the majority of the flames have been extinguished. The sooner we apply the water the less of it that is required to do the job. If we do not apply large streams of water in the late stages of a fire the building will be lost.
Vitamin C works the same way as water in our firefighter analogy. If enough oral vitamin C is taken at an early enough stage of an illness, the inflammation will be quenched and will never get to the exponential growth phase. The longer you wait to take it the more you will need to quench the inflammatory fire growing inside of you. The key to success is to take it at the first sign of symptoms. One you get to the exponential growth phase intravenous vitamin C is needed and it will be effective in a very large percentage of cases. If it is not applied, the result is death in a large percentage of cases.
Doctors in China and even the USA are using intravenous vitamin C on Covid-19 patients with great success. Doctors and researchers all over the world have known for decades about the incredible power of intravenous vitamin C to quench the raging fires of inflammation.
Sepsis is a condition that can be compared to the pneumonia that is killing the immune compromised elderly Covid-19 patients. They are both acute and massive inflammatory responses due to infection. An observational study published in The Lancet found that 100% of the early Covid-19 patients that died in Wuhan had sepsis. And not surprisingly most were older folks with health problems. Sepsis may be responsible for as many as 20% of deaths worldwide. It is one of the top killers of people that die in hospitals. One doctor in the USA has been using intravenous vitamin C in a treatment protocol that has reduced the death rate from sepsis by almost 5 fold – from 40% to 8.5%.
Is It Really That Simple?
Yes it is. “But Percy, then why aren’t governments around the world endorsing it and using it?” That is an almost irrelevant question. Does the scientific evidence and case studies prove it or not? I can give you a very conclusive answer for the USA. We have a corrupt and powerful pharmaceutical industry that exerts a massive amount of influence on our government. They use that power and influence to squash and suppress any medical treatment that cannot be patented and used to make obscene amounts of profit. Vitamin C cannot be patented so therefore it will not be widely used or studied. If it is not being used in your country then maybe your medical system has been corrupted or misled by the West. China is using it extensively, as well as a few renegade doctors in countries all over the world. If you look for them you will find them.
Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence
I do not subscribe to this view because I believe that claims that can be proved or disproved by science all require the same amount of evidence. What is extraordinary to one may be ordinary to another. A good example is 911. I do not consider it to be an extraordinary claim to say that two planes did not bring down three buildings on 9/11/2001, particularly Building 7. The laws of physics prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. But to the vast majority of the American public that is too fantastic of a claim to even warrant checking into. So if you summarily dismiss my claims without serious investigation it will be similar to someone refusing to watch the excellent documentary 911: Explosive Evidence- Experts Speak Out by Architects and Engineers For 911 Truth because it sounds too fantastic to be true. Here are some links to get you started if you would like to conduct your own research. I highly recommend that you do so.
Things That Make You Go Hmmmmm
I would be remiss if I did not touch upon the more bizarre aspects of this crisis. I will list a few. This is certainly not an exhaustive list and I have only linked to the things that are facts. No conspiracy theory links here.
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The biolab in Wuhan
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Event 201, a corona virus pandemic exercise held on Oct. 18, 2019
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The World Bank Pandemic Bonds
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Government officials in sunny Florida are closing parks, beaches and restricting other outdoor activities such as boating in spite of the fact that outdoors in the sunshine is the best place to be during a pandemic
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Netflix releases ‘Pandemic’ docuseries as coronavirus spreads
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Lots of conspiracy theories floating around such as insiders and elites selling stocks and bonds right before the crash, installing 5G cell towers at schools during the shutdown and allegations of bio warfare between the USA and China
I am attempting to apply Occam’s Razor to this crisis but I must admit that the longer this inexplicable and destructive behavior by governments goes on the more difficult it is for me to do so. Are all these things (and more) just amazing coincidences? I will let the reader decide.
Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste
When a “crisis” comes along, whether false flag or real, Western leaders always use it as an excuse to pass liberty destroying legislation that would be otherwise politically untenable. In the USA, 911 gave us the Patriot Act, TSA, DHS, etc. I fully expect the Covid-19 pandemic to bring us similar legislation such as the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act. Power grabs are being suggested and attempted all over the world. Here are a few headlines:
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Corbella: Trudeau’s attempted power grab an alarming breach of trust
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Gordon Brown calls for global government to tackle coronavirus
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EU warns of Hungary power grab as Orban seeks state of emergency extension
I could fill up a page with headlines such as these. It is a very disturbing trend.
Where We Go From Here
I see myself as a realist, not an optimist or a pessimist. My study of history, economics, and politics tells me that the future looks grim. Much of the world is suffering under corrupt and ignorant leaders who cannot possibly successfully lead us out of this mess, particularly in the Western world. The world’s interconnected and dollar dominated financial system is a house of cards that has been waiting on the right flap of a butterfly’s wings to set off a series of events that will cause it to come tumbling down. We are past the point of no return. An economic recession or depression will be ushered in by the response to the Covid-19 virus, not the Covid-19 virus itself. The government response to a crisis always sets up the next crisis. Capital flight to the dollar has already begun en mass. By next year or the year after there will be loan defaults that will set off a worldwide contagion that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park. The Eurozone will implode first. The Covid-19 corona virus will mutate and be back next year and/or the year after that. Lord help us if our leaders shut the world down again next year. China will survive and be the beneficiary of the West’s self destruction. They will suffer, but not nearly as much as the West. The USA dominated Anglo-Zionist Empire will be largely over within 20 years, maybe much sooner. The new financial capital of the world will be China.
Conclusion 1 – What Governments Should Do
After we are on the downside of the infection bell curve governments should begin planning for the next round of this. Instead of being reactive they should be proactive. The primary focus should be to educate their citizens on how to be healthy. Healthy people have little to worry about from Covid-19 or most any other virus. Healthy people do not clog the healthcare system; unhealthy people do. They should also educate their citizens on ways they can support their immune systems and encourage them to do so quickly in the incipient stages of an illness. This will drastically reduce the strain of sick people on overburdened healthcare systems. That leaves only the worst cases to deal with. For these they should follow China’s lead and develop a treatment protocol that incorporates intravenous vitamin C to quench the inflammatory fire in the lungs that leads to death.
The mass quarantines of entire cities, states, and countries must stop. It is not stopping the spread and it is destroying the world economy in the process. If they want to quarantine a population it should be the population with the greatest risk of death – the elderly.
None of this will happen of course. When their approach doesn’t work, Western leaders usually double down on it hoping for a different result. Hopefully there will be some renegade local governments that will defy the unconstitutional decrees of their central government – like what many state governments are doing to the federal government in the USA regarding cannabis laws.
Conclusion 2 – What You Can Do
Since I am not under any illusions that this article will be read and considered by any person in power anywhere on the planet, the advice that follows is the reason I wrote this article. There is little chance that any of our overlords will be cured of the Covid-19 Derangement Syndrome that infects them. But, dear reader, if you are living in fear and hiding in your house or apartment and are afraid of contracting the Covid-19 virus there is hope for you. The antidote for fear is knowledge, training and preparation.
I do not fear fire because I understand it and I am well trained and equipped to extinguish a fire at any stage of development. I always strive to extinguish the fire in its incipient stage before it grows out of control.
I do not fear any virus because I understand them and I understand how my body uses its immune system to defend me from them. If I begin to get sick I know many natural methods to ramp up my immune system’s ability to fight off any infection whether viral or bacterial.
If you are not healthy, begin taking steps to correct that now. This virus will be back, and when it does you want your immune system to be functioning at a high level. Take advantage of this “lockdown” time and gain some knowledge. Instead of watching the 24/7 news cycle repeated over and over again (which can rapidly lead to depression and a loss of hope) redeem the time and study how you can change your diet and lifestyle and get in excellent health. After the current madness subsides and the stores are restocked, begin stocking up on the supplies you will need for the next round of this. Become self sufficient and prepared for any emergency. Whatever you do, do not sit back and wait for the government or pharmaceutical industry to save you.
If you do these things you can join me as I watch in stunned amazement the next time the whole world panics due to a pandemic. You will also be in a position to guide and assist your loved ones and neighbors. An economic storm and additional pandemic storms are coming and like minded people around the world need to pull together and help each other when they hit.
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Percy Carlton is a soon to be retired firefighter/paramedic in a large city in the State of Florida in the USA. He has relentlessly studied and pursued truth in the areas of health, economics and geopolitics for the past 10 years.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 03/31/2020 – 00:05
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