Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times,

Deaths from COVID-19 remain “extremely rare” in people under the age of 20, according to a study of follow-up data in the UK.

Between March 2020 and December 2021, while there were 185 deaths in England among children and young people (CYP) within 100 days of a lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection, fewer than half died directly because of the virus, the study found.

The peer-reviewed study, published on Nov. 8 on the PLOS Medicine Journal website, was conducted by researchers from the UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA). Studying the 22-month follow-up data on all 6,790 under-20s deaths, the team corroborated findings from a number of previous analyses that looked at data from a shorter period of time.

20 Healthy CYP Died From COVID-19

Excluding two stillbirth/intrauterine deaths, 81 (43 percent) deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

It accounts for 1.2 percent of all-cause CYP deaths, with a COVID-19 infection fatality rate of 7 per million (using estimated infections number) and an overall mortality rate of 6 per million (estimated CYP population).

Of the 81 deaths from COVID-19, one in four (20) were otherwise healthy, while 61 had “significant underlying health conditions,” including neuro-disability, immunocompromising conditions, Down syndrome, Edward syndrome, chronic heart disease, and four premature birth, meaning the COVID-19 mortality rate for otherwise healthy CYP was 1.5 per million.

COVID-19 deaths were also clustered among older teens and infants, with more than half (47) occurring among those aged between 16 and 19, and 22 under a year old.

Eight children from the 1- to 4-year-old group died from COVID-19, along with 12 children aged between 5 and 11, and 15 children aged between 12 and 15.

More than half (45) of the COVID-19 deaths occurred when the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus was dominant, while 21 died during the wild-type-dominant period, and 15 died during the Alpha wave.

But the Delta variant was the least deadly in terms of infection mortality rate (6 per million) compared to Alpha (8 per million), and the wild-type (10 per million) as it was more infectious than the previous variants.

The Omicron variant, which became dominant this year, wasn’t included in the study. Dr. Shamez Ladhani, pediatric infectious disease consultant at St. George’s Hospital London and consultant epidemiologist at the UKHSA who co-authored the study, told The Telegraph that “emerging data suggest that the Omicron variant is even less fatal in children compared to previous variants.”

Vaccination Status

Young adults and children over 12 years old were offered COVID-19 vaccines in staggered groups since June 2021. Under-12s weren’t offered vaccination during the studied period.

Less than a third (59) of CYP who died within 100 days of a lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection were eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccination.

Among COVID-19 deaths, 22 were eligible and two were vaccinated, one with one dose and the other with two doses.

Among non-COVID-19 deaths, 37 were eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, 10 received one dose and six had two doses.

Maternal vaccination status for infant deaths wasn’t included in the study. In an email to The Epoch Times, Ladhani said maternal vaccination wasn’t a focus of the study as it’s “very difficult to derive any robust conclusions from the small numbers of infants” included in the paper.

The UKHSA previously published an analysis saying vaccinated women had similar birth outcomes compared to unvaccinated women between January and August 2021, with slightly lower rates of stillbirth and low-birthweight babies and a slightly higher rate of premature births.

A decisive new batch of ballots from Las Vegas’ Clark County has prompted the Associated Press and many other outlets to declare that Nevada incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto has defeated Adam Laxalt, assuring another two years of Democratic control of the U.S. Senate. 

With the win, Democrats will have at least 50 seats plus the vice presidential tiebreaker vote — just as they do today — with an opportunity to secure another seat in the Dec. 6 Georgia runoff pitting Republican Herschel Walker against incumbent Raphael Warnock. With Senate control no longer at stake, it seems likely that already-dull Republican enthusiasm for Trump-backed Walker will sag even more. 

The Arizona governor’s race remains tight, however. Unlike Friday night’s update — Saturday’s new tally brought some good news for the GOP, as Kari Lake trimmed Democrat Katie Hobbs’ lead to 34,129 votes. Hobbs is up 50.7% to 49.3%. 

There are still about 300,000 votes yet to be counted in Arizona, with the great majority coming from two counties: Maricopa, which is home to Phoenix, and Pima County, where Tucson is found.  

Appearing on CNN Saturday evening, Arizona Assistant Secretary of State Allie Bones said rural counties are largely done, and that Maricopa County will give more tallies on both Sunday and Monday. She said it was unclear if Pima will release any more results until Monday. 

Maricopa figures especially heavy. So far, Hobbs is leading Maricopa 52.1% to 47.9%. However, the Saturday batch favored Lake 51.8% to 48.2%, and her campaign hopes the next batches lean harder in her direction to push her to a dramatic 11th-hour victory.  

85,656 late early ballots were counted in Maricopa today. They were spread out all over the county, but many this time did come from GOP strongholds in north loop 101 and the southeast valley. pic.twitter.com/0FBeO3ReCu

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 13, 2022

That may very much be the case. According to Arizona pollster and data analyst Landon Wall, the sequence by which Maricopa has been counting ballots means that tallies are increasingly coming from more Republican-friendly Phoenix suburbs and exurbs.  

According to Bones, of the outstanding Arizona votes, the vast majority are so-called “late earlies” — early-voting ballots that voters completed but then brought to a polling station on Election Day rather than mailing them in. Trump won that particular flavor of Maricopa votes in 2020.  

“It’s not a question that [Republicans] will win the next batches. Only a question of how much,” tweeted ABC15 political analyst Garrett Archer, a former elections analyst for the Arizona secretary of state.   

There are 255,000 uncounted early ballots in Maricopa County. Why are Republicans anticipating that these will break their way? Because 68% of these are in Republican leaning Legislative Districts and they were dropped off on election day rather than mailed which Trump won in ’20 pic.twitter.com/nFgisun3Ct

— Landon Wall (@LandonWall_) November 12, 2022

The Arizona race isn’t the only remaining drama: The House of Representatives is still in play too, with each party trying to hit the 218 seats needed to control the chamber. As of Saturday evening, most outlets put Republicans at 211 seats and Democrats at 204. There are 20 seats still uncalled, and each party has a lead in 10 of them. That makes GOP control likely but still far from certain.  

In one closely-watched but uncalled race, incumbent Colorado firebrand and gun-slinging Trump enthusiast Lauren Boebert, who’d surprisingly trailed her challenger in earlier counting, now has a 1,122-vote lead with 99% of ballots counted. If the lead remains that narrow, it would trigger an automatic recount under Colorado law.

By failing to flip the Senate, Republicans will now have to watch as Biden proceeds to populate the federal judiciary with more leftists. GOP senators also lose the much-anticipated opportunity to proceed with a variety of investigations, from the origins of the Covid-19 virus, to the government’s pandemic decision making, Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling, and more.  

Those investigations can still happen in the House — perhaps, on Covid, that could mean substituting double-MIT-degreed Rep. Thomas Massie for Dr. Rand Paul. 

On Friday, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee told CBS he’s ready to subpoena Hunter Biden and his business records: 

“What Joe Biden said is, ‘Our son is innocent.’ If I were Hunter Biden, I’d want to come clear my name and make some Republicans look bad,” said Rep. James Comer. “So we’re gonna ask Hunter Biden to come before the committee. If he refuses, then I suspect that he would receive a subpoena.” 

…but that and other inquiries all hinge on the GOP’s ability to reach 218 seats in the coming days. 

Authored by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

• In 2008, the “flawless democrat” Putin invaded Georgia. The West was shocked. Putin critics… were shocked that the West was shocked. In 2014, Putin invaded the Crimean Peninsula, sovereign Ukrainian territory. The West remained shocked. In February 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed parts of the sovereign state. Was the West still shocked? It should not have been.

• Apparently the “flawless democrat” Putin is hoping to weaponize winter and force Europe to surrender, but giving in to the Kremlin would be disastrous.

• The EastMed pipeline project was designed to improve Europe’s energy security by diversifying its routes and sources and providing direct interconnection to the production fields while reducing dependence on Russian gas supplies…. U.S. President Joe Biden stepped in with a historic strategic miscalculation that came with a strategic cost: appeasing NATO’s pro-Putin, part-time ally Turkey and jeopardizing Europe’s energy security.

• Only a few weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Biden surprised the EastMed partners by abruptly withdrawing U.S. support for the pipeline, thereby effectively killing the project, preventing a diversified energy supply to Europe, and further assuring Putin’s energy blackmail against Europe.

• The White House said the $6.7 billion project was antithetical to its “climate goals.” Biden presumably hopes no one will actually still be using fossil fuels by 2025, the date for the planned completion of the EastMed pipeline. The Biden administration also cited a supposed lack of economic and commercial viability, even though a 2019 study financed by the EU confirmed that “the EastMed Project is technically feasible, economically viable and commercially competitive.”

• If the Europeans freeze this winter or must pay sky-high bills, they should drink a toast to the likes of Schroeder and Biden.

The story goes back to early 2000’s when German’s then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder decided to develop strategic relations between Berlin and Moscow. He went so far as to offer partnership to Russia in EADS, a multinational European defense and aerospace powerhouse. In November 2004, Schroeder called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “flawless democrat.” Unsurprisingly, in 2004, Schroeder hailed Turkey’s Islamist autocrat, then prime minister (now president) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a “great reformer.”

On the evening of December 9, 2005, seventeen days after Schroeder left office as chancellor, he got a call from his friend Putin. Since leaving public office, Schroeder has worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom, for a salary of $1 million a year. On March 8, 2022, German’s Public Prosecutor General initiated proceedings related to accusations against Schroeder of complicity in crimes against humanity due to his role in Russian state-owned corporations.

In 2008, the “flawless democrat” Putin invaded Georgia. The West was shocked. Putin critics, including this author, were shocked that the West was shocked. In 2014, Putin invaded the Crimean Peninsula, sovereign Ukrainian territory. The West remained shocked.

In February 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed parts of the sovereign state. Was the West still shocked? It should not have been.

In 1972, natural gas exports from the Soviet Union accounted for around 4% of European gas consumption. By 2021, Russia was providing almost 40% of Europe’s gas. As Moscow’s market share has gradually increased, so has its ability to manipulate prices and trigger crises. Most Europeans now acknowledge that this reliance on Russia represents a major strategic blunder. Too late. Europe’s “green energy transition” features one major flaw: it relies on Russian gas imports.

Back to the future. This will be an extremely difficult winter for all Europeans, whether they face blackouts or heating issues and sky-high energy bills. Apparently the “flawless democrat” Putin is hoping to weaponize winter and force Europe to surrender, but giving in to the Kremlin would be disastrous.

Back to the past. In 2017, the governments of Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Israel signed a declaration to confirm their support for the development of the East Mediterranean Pipeline (EastMed), a $6.7 billion, 1,900-km natural gas pipeline project to connect the gas reserves of Israel and Cyprus to Greece and onward to Europe. The pipeline would have an initial capacity to transport 10 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) of gas to Greece, Italy and other southeast European countries. The capacity would then be increased to a maximum of 20 bcm/y in the second phase. The project was confirmed as a “Project of Common Interest” (PCI) by the European governments.

The EastMed pipeline project was designed to improve Europe’s energy security by diversifying its routes and sources and providing direct interconnection to the production fields while reducing dependence on Russian gas supplies. It would provide an opportunity for European Union member state Cyprus to connect to the European gas network, which would further enhance gas trading in southeast Europe.

Turkey, after a punishing international isolation following several diplomatic crises with Israel, threatened militarily to challenge EastMed. In contrast, other countries in the region such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the Gulf states supported what later became the EastMed group, also favored by the EU and United States. So far so good. But wait.

As the past several years saw the East Mediterranean turning into a slow-fuse time bomb sitting over rich hydrocarbons that are claimed questionably by Turkey as a stand-alone regional force, versus an alliance of Greece, Cyprus and Israel, U.S. President Joe Biden stepped in with a historic strategic miscalculation that came with a strategic cost: appeasing NATO’s pro-Putin, part-time ally Turkey and jeopardizing Europe’s energy security.

Only a few weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Biden surprised the EastMed partners by abruptly withdrawing U.S. support for the pipeline, thereby effectively killing the project, preventing a diversified energy supply to Europe, and further assuring Putin’s energy blackmail against Europe.

The White House said the $6.7 billion project was antithetical to its “climate goals.” Biden presumably hopes no one will actually still be using fossil fuels by 2025, the date for the planned completion of the EastMed pipeline. The Biden administration also cited a supposed lack of economic and commercial viability, even though a 2019 study financed by the EU confirmed that “the EastMed Project is technically feasible, economically viable and commercially competitive.”

Biden’s miscalculation must have caused much laughter and substantial champagne consumption in the Kremlin. “Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2.000 for 1.000 cubic meters of natural gas!” tweeted Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, and the country’s former president and prime minister, on February 22, 2022.

Even if Putin was hesitant about making Ukraine his new war theater in January, Biden’s mistake assured him that he was on the right track. If the Europeans freeze this winter or must pay sky-high bills, they should drink a toast to the likes of Schroeder and Biden.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

The meeting this week between two Eurasian security bosses is a further step toward dusting away the west’s oversized Asian footprint…

Two guys are hanging out in a cozy room in Tehran with a tantalizing new map of the world in the background.

Nothing to see here? On the contrary. These two Eurasian security giants are no less than the – unusually relaxed – Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

And why are they so relaxed? Because the future prospects revolving around the main theme of their conversation – the Russia-Iran strategic partnership – could not be more exciting.

This was a very serious business affair: an official visit, at the invitation of Shamkhani.

Patrushev was in Tehran on the exact same day that Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu – following a recommendation from General Sergey Surovikin, the overall commander of the Special Military Operation – ordered a Russian retreat from Kherson.

Patrushev knew it for days – so he had no problem to step on a plane to take care of business in Tehran. After all, the Kherson drama is part of the Patrushev negotiations with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Ukraine, which have been going on for weeks, with Saudi Arabia as eventual go-between.

Besides Ukraine, the two discussed “information security, as well as measures to counter interference in the internal affairs of both countries by western special services,” according to a report by Russia’s TASS news agency.

Both countries, as we know, are particular targets of western information warfare and sabotage, with Iran currently the focus of one of these no-holds-barred, foreign-backed, destabilization campaign.

Patrushev was officially received by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who went straight to the point: “The cooperation of independent countries is the strongest response to the sanctions and destabilization policies of the US and its allies.”

Patrushev, for his part, assured Raisi that for the Russian Federation, strategic relations with Iran are essential for Russian national security.

So that goes way beyond Geranium-2 kamikaze drones – the Russian cousins of the Shahed-136 – wreaking havoc in the Ukrainian battlefield. Which, by the way, elicited a direct mention later on by Shamkhani: “Iran welcomes a peaceful settlement in Ukraine and is in favor of peace based on dialogue between Moscow and Kiev.”

Patrushev and Shamkhani of course discussed security issues and the proverbial “cooperation in the international arena.” But what may be more significant is that the Russian delegation included officials from several key economic agencies.

There were no leaks – but that suggests serious economic connectivity remains at the heart of the strategic partnership between the two top sanctioned nations in Eurasia.

Key in the discussions was the Iranian focus on fast expansion of bilateral trade in national currencies – ruble and rial. That happens to be at the center of the drive by both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS towards multipolarity. Iran is now a full SCO member – the only West Asian nation to be part of the Asian strategic behemoth – and will apply to become part of BRICS+.

Have swap, will travel

The Patrushev-Shamkhani get together happened ahead of the signing, next month, of a whopping $40 billion energy deal with Gazprom, as previously announced by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari.

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has already clinched an initial $6.5 billion deal. All that revolves around the development of two gas deposits and six oilfields; swaps in natural gas and oil products; LNG projects; and building more gas pipelines.

Last month, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak announced a swap of 5 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of gas, to be finished by the end of 2022. And he confirmed that “the amount of Russian investment in Iran’s oil fields will increase.”

Barter of course is ideal for Moscow and Tehran to jointly bypass interminably problematic sanctions and payment settlement issues – linked to the western financial system. On top of it, Russia and Iran are able to invest in direct trade links via the Caspian Sea.

At the recent Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, Raisi forcefully proposed that a successful “new Asia” must necessarily develop an endogenous model for independent states.

As an SCO member, and playing a very important role, alongside Russia and India, in the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), Raisi is positioning Iran in a key vector of multilateralism.

Since Tehran entered the SCO, cooperation with both Russia and China, predictably, is on overdrive. Patrushev’s visit is part of that process. Tehran is leaving behind decades of Iranophobia and every possible declination of American “maximum pressure” – from sanctions to attempts at color revolution – to dynamically connect across Eurasia.

BRI, SCO, INSTC

Iran is a key Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner for China’s grand infrastructure project to connect Eurasia via road, sea, and train. In parallel, the multimodal Russian-led INSTC is essential to promote trade between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia – at the same time solidifying Russia’s presence in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region.

Iran and India have committed to offer part of Chabahar port in Iran to Central Asian nations, complete with access to exclusive economic zones.

At the recent SCO summit in Samarkand, both Russia and China made it quite clear – especially for the collective west – that Iran is no longer going to be treated as a pariah state.

So it is no wonder Iran that is entering a new business era with all members of the SCO under the sign of an emerging financial order being designed mostly by Russia, China and India. As far as strategic partnerships go, the ties between Russia and India (President Narendra Modi called it an unbreakable friendship) is as strong as those between Russia and China. And when it comes to Russia, that’s what Iran is aiming at.

The Patrushev-Shamkhani strategic meeting will hurl western hysteria to unseen levels – as it completely smashes Iranophobia and Russophobia in one fell swoop. Iran as a close ally is an unparalleled strategic asset for Russia in the drive towards multipolarity.

Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) are already negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in parallel to those swaps involving Russian oil. The west’s reliance on the SWIFT banking messaging system hardly makes any difference to Russia and Iran. The Global South is watching it closely, especially in Iran’s neighborhood where oil is commonly traded in US dollars.

It is starting to become clear to anyone in the west with an IQ above room temperature that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or Iran nuclear deal), in the end, does not matter anymore. Iran’s future is directly connected to the success of three of the BRICS: Russia, China and India. Iran itself may soon become a BRICS+ member.

There’s more: Iran is even becoming a role model for the Persian Gulf: witness the lengthy queue of regional states aspiring toward gaining SCO membership. The Trumpian “Abraham Accords?” What’s that? BRICS/SCO/BRI is the only way to go in West Asia today.

Authored by Oscar Silva-Valladares via The Ron Paul Institute,

Timelessness of thought and vision in world politics is a rare mark of grandeur. Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, written a century ago, deserves this distinction as it reads like it was done yesterday.

The German historian-philosopher wrote in 1922 that the centuries old West-European-American civilization was in permanent and irretrievable decline in all manifestations of life including religion, art, politics, social life, economy and science. For him, the political, social and ideological dimensions of this decline were evident in the failings of the Western political class in both sides of the Atlantic. He saw politicians, mostly based in large cities, consumed by ideology and contempt towards silent majorities and described them as “a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, and deeply contemptuous of the countryman.” Nowadays the Brussels-based European Union (EU) leadership, through their recurring disdain for nation sovereignty, fully befits this definition.

Spengler believed that decadence in politics means predominance of ideology over action.

“Men of theory commit a huge mistake in believing that their place is at the head and not in the train of great events” he wrote, unaware about how true this is today as we just saw the fall of UK Prime Minister Truss who sacrificed economics in the altar of ideology. Dogma destroying social cohesion and prosperity is also present in the wrecking of Europe’s manufacturing competitiveness as their politicians forcibly deny cheap Russian energy or when Lilliputian Lithuania picks a fight with China in defence of Taiwan’s “sovereignty.” On the face of these events the German thinker would have repeated his assertion that “the political doctrinaire … always knows what should be done, and yet his activity, once it ceases to be limited to paper, is the least successful and therefore the least valuable in history.”

When we listen to the German Minister of Economic Affairs Harbeck or his Foreign Affairs counterpart Baerbock lecturing on the primacy of the green agenda or on how Ukraine military support needs to continue regardless of what voters think, we can’t help remembering the writer’s damning query:

“[have they] any idea whatever of the actualities of world-politics, world-city problems, capitalism, the future of the state, the relation of technics to the course of civilization, Russia, Science?.”

The “rules-based international order,” that Western axiom born out of post-Cold War euphoria and used to justify US-led hegemonism, reminds us the writer’s aphorism that “nothing is simpler than to make good poverty of ideas by founding a system”. “Even a good idea has little value when enunciated by a solemn ass” comes to mind when we hear the European Commission President von der Leyen or the EU Foreign Affairs Head Borrell repeat the same mantra. “In politics, only its necessity to life decides the eminence of any doctrine,” something that has been forgotten as Europe blindly follows the US in an economic war that is ruining the continent.

On the East-West confrontation, concerning China, Spengler highlighted Western politicians’ traditional lack of understanding of the main drivers of Chinese thinking which have to do with a 4000-year view of history and of their place in the world, as compared to the Western narrow timeframe absorbed by events that took place since 1500. Western self-contained perception of history negates world’s history, he says, adding that world-history, in the Western eyes, is our world picture and not all mankind’s.

American exceptionalism, the dangerous notion that US values, political system and history destines it to play the world’s leading role, was questioned when he pointed out that there are as many morals as there are Cultures, no more and no fewer, and that each Culture possesses its own standard, the validity of which begins and ends with it, a statement that explains the need for a multipolar world. As much as has become politically correct to criticize Nietzsche’s ideas after his appropriation by Nazi ideology, Spengler affirmed that Nietzsche’s basic concept of will of power is essential to Western civilization, and this is consistent with the Western belief on the superiority of its values and the need to impose them on other cultures. “Western mankind is under the influence of an immense optical illusion. Everyone demands something of the rest. We say “thou shalt” in the conviction that so-and-so in fact will, can and must be changed or fashioned or arranged conformably to the order, and our belief both in the efficacy of, and in our title to give, such orders is unshakable.”

Money, politics and the press play an intimate role in Western civilization, declares Spengler. In politics, money “nurses” the democratic process particularly during elections, as is the recurring US case. The press serves him who owns it and it does not spread “free” opinion – it generates it. “What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.” On freedom of the press, we are reminded that it is permitted to everyone to say what he or she pleases, but the Press is free to take notice of what he or she says or not. The Press can condemn any “truth” to death simply by not undertaking its communication to the world – “a terrible censorship of silence which is all the more potent in that the masses of newspaper readers are absolutely unaware that it exists.”

Striking parallels exist between today’s poverty in US cities and his observation of Rome at the time of Crassus, who as a real-estate speculator also recalls Donald Trump. In Rome, people are portrayed as living “in appalling misery in the many-storied lodging-houses of dark suburbs”, a misfortune directly linked to the consequences of Roman military expansionism and which suggests current conditions in Detroit, Cleveland or Newark.

The Decline of the West was first read as the epilogue of World War I, the war that ended all wars. Hopefully it will not be read in today’s world as the introduction of a new calamity.

For years, India has been on track to overtake China as the world’s most populated country.

In fact, we’ve covered this phenomenon in past articles, back when India was expected to overtake China’s population by the end of the decade.

However, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang notes, according to the UN’s latest population prospects, this takeover is projected to happen sooner than previously expected—as early as next year.

This graphic by Pablo Alvarez provides an up-to-date chart of India’s population growth projections compared to other countries. Projection data from Our World in Data ranges from 1800 all the way to until 2100.

Some Historical Context

For over three centuries, China has had the largest population of any country in the world.

In the 1800s, China’s population was about 322 million, which was nearly double India’s at the time. And until the mid-20th century, both countries’ populations stayed relatively stable.

However, in 1949, China’s population started to experience dramatic growth. This occurred after the Chinese Civil War when the People’s Republic of China was first established.

Around the same time, India’s population had also started to increase. Since both countries were experiencing population booms, the status quo remained the same, and China kept its position as the world’s most populated country.

China’s baby boom lasted two decades. But by the late 1970s, the Chinese government implemented a one-child policy in an attempt to slow things down and control population growth, out of fear that China was becoming overpopulated.

The plan worked—according to China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission spokesman Mao Qunan, the government’s efforts ended up reducing the number of births over the years by roughly 400 million.

China’s Population is Aging Faster Than India’s

These days, China has one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world. By 2040, it’s expected that 28% of the country’s population will be over the age of 60.

In contrast, India’s population is relatively young—half of its population is under 30, and only an eighth is over 60.

Does this mean that India’s GDP will eventually outpace China’s? Not necessarily.

As quoted in an article published in Business Standard, Madan Sabnavis, Chief Economist of the Bank of Baroda says that India needs to increase its labor participation, as well as general access to education, in order to reap the benefits of its increasing working-age population.

As of 2022, India’s workforce participation rate sits at 46%, compared to China’s 68%. How will this change in the future?

Authored by Robert Blumen via The Mises Institute,

Among the components of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset are a drastically reduced population and the replacement of human labor with robots and artificial intelligence (AI). The question immediately comes to mind: can robots and AI really make all the stuff for the elites after they have gotten rid of the people?

Because a plan has been formulated and described does not mean that it is possible to realize. The plan may contradict laws of logic or reality, or assume the existence of resources that do not exist.

Podcaster and journalist James Delingpole, speaking to investigative journalist Whitney Webb on October 23, 2021, discussed this topic with his guest. I have transcribed several minutes from their conversation, edited for concision:

Webb: The fourth industrial revolution. One of the main pillars of that is automation and artificial intelligence. We’ve already seen that with corporate behemoths, like Amazon’s efforts to replace human workers with robots. Starbucks is piloting their AI barista with plans to have at least one in most if not all locations…. How long until humans are gone entirely? That’s in a retail setting.

In the UK Tesco recently joined the cashier less checkout. It’s all done on your phone. You scan when you enter the store. Everything is tied to you, your unique digital identifier with the corporation. You can just walk out of the store. How convenient that you didn’t have to walk by a cashier at all.

We’re going to see this happen in big ways in manufacturing. Chile is one of the biggest producers of copper in the world. In the northern part of Chile, the economy is driven by mining…. They are automating the mining here [in Chile]. Most of Chile’s middle class in the north work in the mining industry. They are about to all be cut out….

It’s infinitely more profitable for a corporation to make an initial investment in a robot or an AI algorithm than to continuously pay a worker. Not have to deal with sick pay. There are efforts all over the world to demand better worker benefits. Better hours. Robots are the ultimate worker for a lot of these people because they are not interested in the human equation of things. There is a move to a human-free future coupled with anti-human rhetoric.

The substitution of machines for human labor is a process that has been going on since the first industrial revolution. A considerable amount of manufacturing is already done by robots. But does it matter if a machine is a robot or not? Telecommunications switches connect calls that used to be done by telephone operators. We do not identify these machines as robots (perhaps because they do not have a recognizable torso and limbs or perhaps because they perform their work on data rather than physical objects) but the impact on the demand for labor to perform those tasks is the same.

Contrary to Webb, it is not “infinitely more profitable” for a corporation to use an AI-powered robot in place of a person. Profitability is a calculation that depends on the price of the robot, the productivity of the robot, the wages of the person and the productivity of the human worker.

The substitution of capital for labor makes economic sense when the cost of the capital goods per unit value of output—including paying for the entire supply chain—is less than the wages of the person that is replaced.

Yes, workers are paid wages. However, robots and other machines are themselves not free goods. They must be designed, tested, and maintained. They are made of many parts which must be manufactured and transported. The manufacturing process is performed by some combination of people and other machines. The parts are ultimately made from materials that are mostly mined or extracted from the earth, also by men and machines.

Workers prefer better working conditions over worse. And for machines as well there are optimal working conditions. A truck that is driven on poor roads in bad weather will wear out or break down more quickly. Computers need a carefully tuned environment that is temperature and humidity controlled. Computer servers are housed in a complex capital good known as a “data center.”

The wages that are required to hire the workers are determined on the labor market, by the various competing uses for each person’s skills. If the cost of the robot is less than the worker, that is only because their labor is more urgently demanded doing something else. There is a greater need for human labor somewhere else in the world.

AI itself is not inexpensive. Building and running AI requires engineering effort and computing resources such as networks, servers, and storage. AI models are trained by data that must originate with the same human intelligence that the AI is trying to reproduce. If you want to train AI to recognize photographs of cats, someone must have taken the photographs and classified them as cats or “not cats” so that the AI can be validated. If the photos come from security cameras, someone must have installed the cameras.

After the model is built it must be maintained. AI models do not run perfectly forever. They must be monitored for drift, and it requires a human to determine if the drift is due to an error in the ingestion of data, such as a change in units, or a true change in the customer preferences that the model is trying to extract. In the latter case, the model must be retrained on a new data set.

Modern computer systems are built with some degree of self-diagnosing and self-repairing abilities. But the automation must punt all but the most straightforward cases into a call for help that brings a human into the process. Humans are necessary to diagnose problems and restore service when something has gone wrong.

The manufacture of machines such as robots requires a complex structure of production with perhaps tens of thousands of individual parts. Each part must be designed—by a person—manufactured and integrated with the other parts. The integrations, including isolating manufacturing defects, must be tested, and debugged.

Parts are transported by industries such as shipping and trucking. All of these steps involve combinations of labor and capital goods. It is true that people take sick days, however, machines break, wear out, and, and require repairs. The humans who repair the machines also have kids and take sick days. If you need to send the robot out for service, a mover will pack it up and load it on a truck. Self-driving cars? Maybe someday, but not any day soon.

Robots and made out of metals, which are mined out of the ground. Mineral deposits are not straightforward to find, to delineate and to mine. The discovery and extraction of mineral resources is a tremendously high-intellect activity. A small number of exploration geologists—many with doctoral degrees in fields such as geology and geophysics—have discovered a disproportionate fraction of mineable mineral deposits. Without labor, where would the metals come from to build the robots?

Someone like Webb might respond that robots will replace all of these functions as well. And some day, they might. However, the replacement of humans by machines for one task creates a need for labor—with different skills—to operate the machines. That is why we now have jobs for truckers, power plant operators, and machinists instead of wood cutters.

If miners were replaced with robots—how much labor would be required to build the robots including the entire supply chain, transportation, and the energy used to run them? It’s hard to say but a fraction of the impact would be shifts in the type of employment.

Has the substitution of capital for human labor over the centuries since the industrial revolution has reduced overall employment? Not so much. We have far more need for labor now because we have accumulated so much capital and require more labor to operate it. The human population has increased—in lockstep with the demand for human labor—because we are so much more productive with our enormous legacy of capital goods that we can support much more population.

Replacing the most routine and repeatable human labor with machines creates demand for the currently irreplaceable types of labor: creativity and problem-solving skills. It is true that boundaries of what machines can do expands over time. For example, voice recognition, which used to be quite poor, now handles a range of accents much better. However, AI is still at a point where it can at best replicate human learning by observing many samples created by humans. But for anyone who has tried to change their airline ticket by talking to a chat bot, it is clear that AI is at present limited to a standardized set of tasks.

As we can afford it, out of our accumulated savings, capitalists will continue to invest in robots and other forms of automation to replace workers. When this results in cost savings, that means more output at a lower cost, and a rising standard of living. As certain goods become cheaper to manufacture, workers can demand other, new and different goods and services, which feeds the indirect demand for labor in those industries.

Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

Do any of you think we are over-reacting? I don’t think so, but the sheep-folk certainly do. They claim they are willing to let bygones be bygones and just put it all in the past and get on with life.

I am sure everyone reading this is aware of the bombshell editorial The Atlantic dropped recently with their amnesty nonsense. I don’t think I have been more livid reading an article since the days of seeing piece after piece about how effective masks are against viral transmission.

I won’t comment on The Atlantic blather directly here, as there have been many fine responses to it, but wow, what a piece. So typical of a bully trying to pretend he loved his victims all along when he knows he is cornered and about to be punished. One last punch disguised as a kiss.

I just got back from a little cruise. Major ports were Barcelona, Rome, Florence, Monaco, and a smattering of little French and Italian hideaways. I had mixed feelings about going, but realized that if this tsunami we all see coming a few miles off the shore has the potential of wiping out most travel in the foreseeable future, I figured I might as well get something in before the onslaught.

It was nice in a lot of ways, as would be expected, but in other ways unusually disconcerting. For one thing, very, very few people had masks, and thus there was a palatable scent in the air of “Covid is a thing of the past.”

One would think this was a good thing, but instead it exuded a very clear vibe of denial.

Oddly enough, not wearing masks, and believing Covid to be over, to me is just another example of compliance to authority.

I know that seems a stretch, but if Covid were real, coupled with the truth that the vaccines do not work, and we were told again and again that there would be no natural herd immunity without a working vaccine, and we still hear of infections rising, variants being created, and hospitals becoming over crowded, why would people think the disease just died and disappeared? The reason is because we were told it was over.

We were told we suddenly didn’t need masks, that we could party with friends, vaxxed or unvaxxed, that we could gather in huge crowds, get on cruise ships (no one even cared that I was unvaccinated.) We were told what was true, what was real and what to worry or not worry about. And like sheep, most people blindly followed.

So shouldn’t I be happy? If I were, it would be for all of the wrong reasons. It is true we are all happy when the slave owner puts down the whip. Whip or not, however, we are still slaves.

I, too, bask in the sun of my controlled freedom—I went on a cruise didn’t I? After two years of not being “allowed to”—so I am just as guilty of this sort of compliance. I am one step closer to truth though; I know this offer of freedom is a tactic, a ploy, and a ruse.

I’ll take a scrap of bread when it is offered, but I will not succumb to complacency and forgive my master for his cruelty when he behaves, albeit for just a moment, as my friend. Most everyone else seems fine to let bygones be bygones.

I am not, and I suspect most of you reading this are not as well.

The great danger I see here in the masses just carrying on in complacent forgiveness is that they are encouraged to stay blind. Surely if they speak out against the atrocities that the world has experienced over the past three years they would quickly be categorized as a trouble maker, a pariah, and a misfit.

“Just get over it, man, it’s all over.”

Is it? No, of course not, you and I know that, and it is all still going on in various ways under the covers now, in the dark recesses of the culture: persecutions, continued efforts to vaccinate, and particularly vaccinate children, warnings of an “upcoming dark winter” where restrictions will come back into the mainstream. On and on, you know what I am speaking of.

However, the mass attitude now, as per The Atlantic piece, is “nothing all that much really happened.”

No one died unnecessarily due to the Covid response, no one got sick, no one lost their job or their livelihood, no one suffered socially (particularly children wearing masks in school), no one suffered educationally, nothing bad really happened.

If you are still pissed about all that DID happen, then you are overreacting…much ado about nothing.

So get over it, forget and forgive.

Not everyone on the world has read that article, but what I saw in Europe, it seems that most people, at least on physical observation, are basically taking on that attitude.

It breaks my heart.

I think about the countless mothers sitting by their children in countless hospitals nurturing them through a totally unprecedented heart incident.

I think of the countless families standing together at the funeral of a loved one, dead prematurely from a heart attack, blood clotting, or cancer—cause unknown, unless you want to apply the newly created diagnoses, “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.” What the hell is that?

A novel disease and now a common cause of death? Easy peasy explanation, eh? I think of the countless numbers of people suffering from a myriad of strange afflictions, which suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

I think again of countless people having suffered unconscionably, and pointlessly, after losing their jobs, their businesses, their life savings, and their livelihood—the countless children with lower IQs, and those who have suffered social retardation due to the mask mandates, social distancing, and mandatory online teaching at home with no socialization at all.

I could write 100 pages describing all of this—but most people don’t know, and if they do, don’t care, or just attribute all of this horror to the “cost of living—some are lucky in life, some are not.”

During my recent cruise not a word was uttered about any of this, thousands of people were encountered walking the streets of Rome, Florence, Barcelona, all laughing, eating, drinking, playing. While just beneath their feet, hidden a foot underground, there are skulls and bones of the fallen—all forgotten, and the perpetrators all forgiven.

When I was occasionally shaken from my self-induced and compliant vacation reverie, my heart ached talking to all of the young vibrant crewmembers on our ship.

I would hear of their plans to be married, create families, further their careers and live fully their vibrant lives—followed with the admission that they all had to be vaccinated to get their current jobs on the ship.

What really lies ahead for these beautiful children of God so innocent and full of life? I would shake my head, “maybe none of this is true, and maybe I am making more of it than it really is. Maybe they are right, and it really wasn’t that bad, just a mistake made here and there that we really could get over. It is all fine…let’s move on.”

Then a bone cracks under my foot—just a few inches from the surface of awareness—the truth. And I slip back into reality.