dChan
Anonymous ID: 004bda March 24, 2020, 7:21 p.m. No.8554270   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>4311 >>4324 >>4327 >>4342 >>4371 >>4485 >>4635 >>4637 >>4672 >>4723 >>4752

>>8554259

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192638/coronavirus-bill-gates-trump-reopen-business

 

Bill Gates says we can’t restart the economy soon and simply “ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner”

 

 

Bill Gates rebuked proposals, floated over the last two days by leaders like Donald Trump, to reopen the global economy despite the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak, saying that this approach would be “very irresponsible.”

 

Gates did not mention Trump by name, but the American president has said that he may decide to relax some of the country’s “social distancing” in order to jumpstart the country’s shut-down economy. Gates, the country’s leading philanthropist, has been among the most active tech leaders in using his resources to try and contain the virus.

 

“There really is no middle ground, and it’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner. We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts,’” Gates said in an interview with TED Tuesday. “It’s very irresponsible for somebody to suggest that we can have the best of both worlds.”

 

Trump has suggested that this middle ground would indeed be possible — by letting some healthy people return to work, for instance, while keeping more vulnerable workers in their homes. Experts have said that drastic and widespread social distancing is required to keep the pandemic from spreading further. Trump has said he would make a decision at the end of the month but has said that he believes the “cure” could be worse than the “problem itself.”

 

Asked what he would do if he were president, Gates returned to his concerns about reopening the economy.

 

“The economic effect of this is really dramatic. Nothing like this has ever happened to the economy in our lifetimes,” Gates said. “But bringing the economy back … that’s more of a reversible thing than bringing people back to life. So we’re going to take the pain in the economic dimension — huge pain — in order to minimize the pain in the diseases-and-death dimension.”

 

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has put up $100 million for programs to fund testing and science around the pandemic, and he has begun using his public profile, too, to shape the coronavirus conversation. This month, Gates himself resigned from the board of Microsoft, which he founded, and is now effectively a full-time philanthropist — and the country’s most famous one.

 

And Gates has tried to cast himself as an optimist. He has said that the social distancing measures might need to last as little as six weeks, but said that “we have no choice,” despite the economic impacts.

 

“It’s disastrous for the economy,” Gates said. But “the sooner you do it in a tough way, the sooner you can undo it and go back to normal.”

Anonymous ID: 004bda March 24, 2020, 7:50 p.m. No.8554626   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>4723

>>8554613

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/coronavirus-xijinping-03232020141057.html

 

China's President Feeling The Pressure From Dissent in Own Party

 

President Xi Jinping is under growing political pressure from within the ranks of the ruling Chinese Communist Party over his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

 

An open letter circulating online since last week calls for an emergency, expanded meeting of the Politburo to discuss "Xi's issues" and to decide if he should step down from his leadership of party, government and military.

 

The letter says Xi's handling of the coronavirus epidemic should be discussed, but also the trade war with the U.S. and his fueling of mistrust of China in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

 

The letter was shared to WeChat by Chen Ping, founder of Hong Kong-based broadcaster SunTV, according to Deutsche Welle and Radio Taiwan International.

 

Chen wrote in a WeChat post: "I saw it in a WeChat group, and I felt that it was moderate and rational, so I reposted it."

 

"But I don't know who wrote it," he said. "A lot of other people reposted this anonymous letter online."

 

Former Tsinghua University politics lecturer Wu Qiang said the letter comes soon after the disappearance and presumed detention of social media star and property tycoon Ren Zhiqiang.

 

Ren is currently incommunicado, believed detained, after an article critical of the government's response to the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan appeared online.

 

Health authorities in China are reporting no new infections in the central city of Wuhan where the COVID-19 epidemic first emerged, but local residents have said they fear there could be a resurgence of new cases amid an ongoing official cover-up.

Anonymous ID: 004bda March 24, 2020, 7:56 p.m. No.8554717   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>8554674

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%A1br%C3%B3k

Nábrók

 

Nábrók (calqued as necropants, literally "corpse britches") are a pair of pants made from the skin of a dead man, which are believed in Icelandic witchcraft to be capable of producing an endless supply of money. It is unlikely these pants ever existed outside of folklore.

 

If you want to make your own necropants (literally; nábrók), you have to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his death.

 

After he has been buried, you must dig up his body and flay the skin of the corpse in one piece from the waist down. As soon as you step into the pants, they will stick to your own skin. A coin must be stolen from a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign, nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper. Consequently, the coin will draw money into the scrotum so that it will never be empty, as long as the original coin is not removed. To ensure salvation, the owner has to convince someone else to take ownership of the pants and step into each leg as soon as he gets out of it. The necropants will thus keep the money-gathering nature for generations.