Gov’t to purchase 500 laptops to ‘loan’ to students & teachers
Additionally, a further 132 laptops will be made available through private donations.
This announcement was made by Minister for Education, Culture, Youth Affairs, Fisheries and Agriculture Dr the Honourable Natalio D. Wheatley (R7) at a Zoom lunch meeting of the Rotary Club of Tortola on May 7, 2020, and made public on JTV’s “The Big Story” late last night, May 8, 2020.
Hon Wheatley said monies will be taken from the Consolidated Fund to purchase the laptops for students and teachers in the public education system and that the additional 132 will be donated by Unite BVI and Bitter End Yacht Club.
Devices will be loaned
It was made clear by Dr Wheatley; however, that the devices will not be given to persons for keeps, but rather be loaned.
“We will be implementing a loan programme and these devices will remain the property of the Government of the Virgin Islands so that more persons coming into the education system will have access to these devices as persons graduate and go along their educational journey.”
The Education Minister said learning via virtual means is now the order of the day due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Territory has to respond accordingly.
“We are now asking persons to switch to laptops and tablets and certainly now the world is going through a quick transition and we can’t be left behind here in the Virgin Islands in that transition.”
Dr Wheatley, said, however, that Government is aware there are persons who are better equipped to make the transition to digital learning than others” hence the initiative by Government to ensure everyone is equipped and given access to the technology and learning platforms.
What about internet service?
As it pertains to internet service, Dr Wheatley said Government has been in constant contact with the telecommunication companies in the Territory- CCT, Digicel and Flow.
He said based on a survey conducted persons were willing to pay somewhere around $50 for internet service.
The Education Minister also said Government is expecting an announcement from the telecommunication companies soon about a special plan they have formulated.
Meantime, Flow has been giving a 25% discount on all existing plans already being enjoyed by some teachers.
Some telecommunication companies have also zero-rated internet data usage for some websites as part of their contributions.
Additionally, the government is moving to have all schools outfitted with fibre optic internet connection, something already enjoyed by some schools, thanks to Flow and Digicel.
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27 Responses to “Gov’t to purchase 500 laptops to ‘loan’ to students & teachers”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&time_continue=3&v=XF9wtBcWepM
https://www.reddit.com/r/CovIdiots/comments/gezery/plandemic_documentary_debunked/
For everyone's sake, if you intend to comment, please per Reddit it's obviously a lot but READ THROUGH THE COMMENTS FIRST so many of your questions have already been addressed and several contemporaries of Dr. Mikovits' at UNR (where WPI is) have contributed their own experience, as have other great investigators who caught even more misinformation in this video than I address here. The comments here are where there is more gold. Thank you.
Edit for TLDR: Dr. Judy Mikovits makes a number of claims in a pseudo-documentary that she discovered a dangerous virus called XMRV but that the Deep State and Big Pharma silenced her including by false arrest with no charges, warrantless search, forced bankruptcy and gag order. She claims that Dr. Anthony Fauci and Robert Gallo stole her HIV research and claimed it as their own causing millions of deaths; that she was employed at Camp Dertrick to cause the mutation of Ebola making it infections to humans in the 1990s; that Dr. Fauci has paid people of to silence her ...and many more!
In reality, Dr. Mikovits is a scientist who in her entire career published EDIT FOR INTEGRITY: only two published research papers that she claims in the video are being suppressed at the expense of "millions of lives" and we are only really here to address the claims Dr. Mikovits makes in this "documentary" END EDIT: a doctoral thesis and a 2011 paper linking the XMRV virus to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which has since been discredited by over a dozen attempts by peers to replicate it, which she appears to blame Dr. Fauci for. Subsequent to her research being proven fraudulent, Dr. Mikovits was fired from the private foundation that hired her to research cures for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and was expecting a $1.5M grant from the NIAID Dr. Fauci heads to do additional research. She then conspired with a research associate who was also her tenant to steal 18 notebooks, flash drives and a laptop computer that were the physical and intellectual property of the foundation that had just fired her. Warrants for Dr. Mikovits’ arrest and the search of her home were executed based on the confession of the research assistant who delivered the stolen property to her.
The “documentary” begins…
“Dr. Judy Mikovits has been called one of the most accomplished scientists of her generation.
… [claims that Dr. Mikovits revolutionized AIDS testing and treatment]
At the height of her career, Dr. Mikovits published a blockbuster article in the journal, Science. The controversial article sent shockwaves through the scientific community as it revealed that the common use of animal and human fetal tissues were unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases. For exposing their deadly secrets, the minions of Big Pharma waged war on Dr. Mikovits Destroying her good name, career and personal life.”
At minute 1:55 in the film “one of the most accomplished scientists of her time” claims that she was arrested, but charged with NOTHING. At minute 1:58 she claims to have been held in jail with no charges, which if true would absolutely violate the 6th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 2:05 she claims there was “no warrant” for her arrest and at 2:13 she claims that her house was searched without a warrant which if true, would violate the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and at 2:26 she claims that the stolen intellectual property was PLANTED in her house in California. At 2:57 she claims that the FBI are involved (they were not) and that her case in under seal so that no attorney can represent her or defend her, or they would be found in contempt of court, which if true would of course violate too many Constitutional norms to enumerate but yes, basically ALL of them are being denied her… according to her.
The actual Criminal charges vs. the wild claims by Dr. Mikovits
In 2006 Dr. Judy Mikovits was hired as Research Director for a private foundation associated with UNR called Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno, NV which was created by a very wealthy couple comprised of an attorney and a businessman whose daughter suffers from “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” in an effort to find a cure for their daughter. When Dr. Mikovits went to work at WPI, her contract included clauses not unlike what is included when I do litigation support research for attorneys: her contract states that any and all of her work product belongs to WPI, she may retain NO COPIES of any of it. She most certainly was not authorized to remove any work product from WPI. To do so, is theft of intellectual property.
Dr. Mikovits was fired from WPI for refusing to turn over a cell sample shipment received at her lab to another researcher at the institute on September 29, 2011, the details of which are outlined in witness Max Proft’s affidavit. (link below)
After Dr. Mikovits' departure, WPI discovered that 12 to 20 laboratory notebooks and flash drives containing years of research data were missing. In an initial statement through her attorney, Dr. Mikovits stated that she had received notice of her firing from WPI on her cell phone and immediately left Nevada for her home near Ventura, California. Dr. Mikovits denied having the notebooks and, in fact, Dr. Mikovits’ attorney was requesting that the lab notebooks be returned to her so that she could continue to work on the grants she won while employed at the WPI and fulfill her responsibilities on these government grants and corporate contacts.
After WPI reported a theft to the University of Nevada police, and an investigation was launched and a subordinate research assistant and TENANT of Dr. Mikovits’ in Reno named Max Pfost, provided a sworn affidavit detailing his own complicity in stealing the notebooks and delivering them to Dr. Mikovits. His sworn affidavit was the basis of the warrant for Dr. Mikovits’ arrest and the search of her home in California. I recommend reading his affidavit in full because it provides a lot of relevant details in both the civil and criminal cases:
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/268451-exh-1-reply-iso
Following Dr. Mikovits’ arrest, a second researcher at WPI named Amanda McKenzie also provided a sworn affidavit in which she attests that Dr. Mikovits asked her to remove laboratory samples and other materials from WPI and deliver them to another researcher who is a co-author of Dr. Mikovits’ now-discredited research paper and one of two of the four authors of that study who refuses to retract the study, the other one being Dr. Mikovits. According to her affidavit, Amanda McKenzie declined to do cooperate with Dr. Mikovits’ plans.
Contrary to Dr. Mikovits’ claim in “Plandemic Documentary” that she was arrested without warrant, held in jail without charges and additionally, her home searched without warrant, in fact, warrants for her arrest and the search and recovery of stolen property at her home WERE issued by the University of Nevada at Reno Police Department November 17, 2011. Dr. Mikovits was arrested at her California home on November 18, 2011 and charged with two felonies: 1. possession of stolen property and 2. unlawful taking of computer data, equipment, supplies, or other computer-related property. She was held without bail for 5 days while awaiting arraignment and hearing on extradition to Nevada - which she waived - after 18 laboratory notebooks belonging to WPI, as well a computer and other items were recovered from her home following the warranted search. The criminal charges were later dismissed without prejudice pending the outcome of the civil trial against Dr. Mikovits for losses related to the stolen but mostly recovered notebooks. The “gag order” Dr. Mikovits refers to relates to the civil lawsuit WPI filed against her which Dr. Mikovits LOST and as a result, was ordered to pay attorney fees and damages to WPI. She chose to declare bankruptcy rather than pay. Frankly, she should never have stolen the notebooks, because she KNEW that her contract with WPI stipulated that all laboratory work product belonged to them, including the all-important notebooks. Unfortunately, I think she felt like she had to steal them because at the time she was still trying to claim her study was valid and adjust testing parameters for the XMRV virus that would create more positive test results from her patients, as noted in the edited abstract of her published study. The notebooks are essential documentation of all the laboratory’s methods.
In two sworn affidavits, Max Pfost details how Dr. Mikovits told him that “WPI was going down” and that she was going to see to it that at least half of a $1.5M R01 grant from the US National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease would follow her to a new employer. According to his affidavit:
“She stated she was going to try to move the R01 grant and the Department of Defense grants and stop the Lipkin study.”
The Lipkin study was a multi-centre trial, headed by Ian Lipkin, a virologist at Columbia University in New York, trying to prove or disprove once and for all Mikovits’s largely discredited hypothesis that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is caused by a mysterious family of retroviruses, among them XMRV.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448165/
The Lipkin study was commissioned by DR. ANTHONY FAUCI and this, is where Dr. Mikovits’ true resentment and subsequent slanderous accusations against Dr. Fauci originate. Dr. Fauci may have cost Dr. Mikovits at least $750k in federal grant money by insisting on additional peer-reviewed research of her failed attempt to link the XMRV virus to
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
https://www.virology.ws/2011/05/06/ian-lipkin-on-xmrv/comment-page-4/
Who is Judy Mikovits and what is she even talking about?
In 1992 she earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from George Washington University. Her Ph.D. thesis was entitled “Negative Regulation of HIV Expression in Monocytes” and her empirical thesis research relates to repressor proteins that could inhibit HIV DNA from replicating. Her only published paper on HIV is not suppressed. In fact, this very documentary claims it its’ very first moments that Dr. Mikovits DID revolutionize the testing/treatment of HIV/AIDS so… did she or didn’t she? Her thesis is available here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2187891/
Dr. Mikovits did do some post-graduate DNA research in molecular virology at the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, National Cancer Institute, although she published zero research during her years there. Ze-ro. If Dr. Fauci stole her homework then… where is this 1999 paper she claims she had “in publication”? She doesn’t have a copy? Her research associates don’t???
It was while working for WPI in 2009 that Dr. Mikovits published the only significant research paper of her career in the journal Science, entitled “Detection of an infectious retrovirus, XMRV, in blood cells of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome”, in which she and four other colleagues claimed to have found genetic markers indicating the presence of retroviruses including one called XMRV in the blood products of patients suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. When no other laboratory could replicate the results Dr. Mikovits published, she went back and altered the protocols for detection to make nearly all the results “positive” for XMRV and other retrovirus, which they concede was done in the edited abstract of their own research paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3073172/
By 2011 two of the original researchers including Dr. Lombardi had come to understand that the results they had published were only factually explainable by laboratory contamination and partially retracted their research, later petitioning to have their names removed from the study entirely:
“Four laboratories tested the samples for the presence of antibodies that react with XMRV proteins. Only WPI and NCI/Ruscetti detected reactive antibodies, both in CFS specimens and negative controls. There was no statistically significant difference in the rates of positivity between the positive and negative controls, nor in the identity of the positive samples between the two laboratories.
These results demonstrate that XMRV or antibodies to the virus are not present in clinical specimens. Detection of XMRV nucleic acid by WPI is likely a consequence of contamination. The positive serology reported by WPI and NCI/Ruscetti laboratories remained unexplained, but are most likely the result of the presence of cross-reactive epitopes. The authors of the study conclude that ‘routine blood screening for XMRV/P-MLV is not warranted at this time’.”
https://www.virology.ws/2011/09/27/trust-science-not-scientists/
This did not stop WPI from bringing to market a laboratory test for XMRV at a cost of $500 to each patient for the financial benefit of WPI, that even Dr. Mikovits did not believe was providing accurate results according to her ”testimony” in “Plandemic Documentary” on YouTube…
https://phoenixrising.me/research-2/the-pathogens-in-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-mecfs/xmrv/xmrv-testing
In November 2011 Science published a NINE LABORATORY STUDY that also failed to confirm XMRV or other viruses in the blood of and therefore as a cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in patients.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/334/6057/814
By the end of 2011 Science had issued a full retraction of Dr. Mikovits’ published findings in their journal:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/12/updated-rare-move-science-without-authors-consent-retracts-paper-tied-mouse-virus
Let’s review the rest of the video for fun…
At minute 7:40 Dr. Mikovits begins to falsely claim that the Bayh-Dole Act has “ruined” science by allowing grant recipients to retain ownership claims to their inventions and get rich, but in reality, when it comes to Dr. Fauci (and university researchers similarly under contract with those institutions), by his contractual agreement with NIAID the ownership of those patents, in fact, resides with that agency and thus, with the taxpayers and THAT, is who will receive royalties from the grants Dr. Fauci employed in order to make his discoveries that lead to those patents. Those royalties go 1/2 to the NIAID, a taxpayer-funded agency in order to fund more research grants (like the one Dr. Mikovits has now been denied in light of her unethical practices) and the other 1/2 to the drug manufacturer. I don’t see the problem.
Dr. Fauci and others at HHS applied for their first patent on a method for activating the immune system in mammals in 1995 and it did involve the Il-2 treatments Dr. Mikovits references in the video at minute 7:40, but nothing in the patent is unique to the treatment of HIV/AIDS; it looks like it most applies to use in treating leukemia and in fact, in the Background of the Invention [0010] included with the patent registration it states: “No method of treatment of HIV with IL-2 has been disclosed which results in a sustained response or which yields long-term beneficial results.” So how is it that this Dr. Mikovits sees fit to BLAME Dr. Fauci for AIDS deaths? It’s slanderous.
https://patents.justia.com/patent/20030180254
At 9:17 we are hit with the biggest irony in the world when Dr. Mikovits criticizes Bill Gates’ foundation for helping to fund research (making the FOUNDATION, not Bill Gates himself, possibly eligible for some claim if patents are filed and Stanford v. Roche is the standard that would apply, as it does to all of Dr. Fauci’s patents), when the place that Dr. Mikovits was fired from (WPI) for misappropriating cell samples - the place THROUGH which she was seeking a $1.5M research grant FROM NIAID - is a PRIVATE FOUNDATION that was founded by an attorney and her husband, seeking a cure for their daughter’s Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. WPI contractually had the same rights under Stanford v. Roche to any invention or discovery of hers and after she was fired for misappropriating samples and proven to be a thief of intellectual property, Dr. Mikovits was in danger of losing her own $1.5M grant from NIAID. That’s her real beef here.
So, what is the truth? Did Dr. Mikovits “discover” a dangerous virus causing “plagues of disease” as this “documentary” claims and then finds herself silenced and bankrupted by the Deep State and Big Pharma? No, she absolutely did not. A man named Dr. Robert Silverman “discovered” the XMRV virus in prostate cancer samples and published his own findings attempting to link that virus to disease in 2006.
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.0020025
Dr. Mikovits met Dr. Silverman at a conference in 2007 and at that time Dr. Mikovits decided to start testing her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients for the virus, using methods Dr. Silverman actually developed. Dr. Silverman has since stood by HIS discovery of XMRV, but has completely retracted his study linking the virus to the disease of prostate cancer.
“In their new study in PLOS ONE, Silverman and colleagues meticulously retraced their experimental steps to determine the source of XMRV contamination in their cell cultures, which has garnered praise from other researchers. “These scientists put their egos aside and aggressively and relentlessly pursued several lines of investigation to get to the truth," National Cancer Institute researcher Vinay Pathak told ScienceNOW*.* Pathak was among the researchers who published data that refuted a connection between XMRV and disease.
…
After publications by Pathak and others, Silverman said he felt convinced that there was an error in his findings. “I felt I couldn't rest until I figured out how it happened,” Silverman told ScienceNOW. “I wanted to get some closure.””
https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/surprise-xmrv-retraction-40456
Too bad Dr. Mikovits has no such ethics.
This absurd “documentary” then goes on to show video clips of doctors claiming they are being “pressured” to record deaths as Covid-19 but included again is Dr. Erickson, the now-debunked California doctor who DOES NOT ATTEND DYING PATIENTS IN ANY HOSPITAL and therefore, is absolutely NOT “being pressured” to fill out any “death reports”.
At 14:52 Dr. Mikovits validates the claim that the filmmaker makes that doctors and hospitals are being “incentivized” to report cases as Covid-19 and Dr. Mikovits cites the figure of a $13,000 “bonus”?? from Medicare?? That is so laughable. The overwhelming majority of hospitals in the United States are privately owned, so if ANY hospital is pressuring ANY doctor to falsely code Covid-19 claims with an expectation financial gain, that would be Medicare fraud. IS this documentary seriously meaning to allege that widespread Medicare fraud is being perpetrated by U.S. hospitals that doctors are complicit with? That is one hell of an accusation.
Dr. Mikovits works in laboratories and apparently understands very little about medical billing for patients, but I have had to deal with mountains of medical bills in personal injury and medical malpractice, so allow me to explain a few things supplemented with some of the newest information as regards Covid-19 coding and billing:
Patients’ conditions are recorded including using diagnostic codes, for the purposes of billing and also empirical study. Diagnosis coding accurately portrays the medical condition that a patient is experiencing; ICD diagnostic coding accurately reflects a healthcare provider's findings.
A healthcare provider’s progress note is composed of four component parts: 1. the patient’s chief complaint, the reason that initiates the healthcare encounter 2. the provider documents his or observations including a review of the patient’s history, a review of pertinent medical systems, and a physical examination. 3. the healthcare provider renders an assessment in the form of a diagnosis 4. a plan of care is ordered. Diagnostic codes are used to justify why medical procedures are performed. If you don’t code a patient for presumptive Covid-19, you cannot order and bill for a Covid-19 test, nor apparently justify hospital quarantine for a Medicare patient without charging the patient an additional co-pay UNLESS you code their diagnosis as Covid-19.
According to official guidance from the CDC, providers should only use code U07.1 to document a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 as documented by the provider, per documentation of a positive COVID-19 test result, or a presumptive positive COVID-19 test result. This also applies to asymptomatic patients who test positive for coronavirus. “Suspected, possible, probable, or inconclusive cases of COVID-19 should not be assigned U07.1” CDC emphasizes in the guidance. Instead, providers should assign codes explaining the reason for the encounter, such as a fever or Z20.828, “Contact with and (suspected) exposure to other viral communicable diseases”.”
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/icd/COVID-19-guidelines-final.pdf
Medicare and Medicaid do not have “set amounts” that are paid based on diagnostic codes. Dr. Mikovits is clearly as misinformed as half the internet right now but here is where they are getting the numbers they are twisting into fiction for their own purposes:
“To project how much hospitals would get paid by the federal government for treating uninsured patients, we look at payments for admissions for similar conditions. For less severe hospitalizations, we use the average Medicare payment for respiratory infections and inflammations with major comorbidities or complications in 2017, which was $13,297. For more severe hospitalizations, we use the average Medicare payment for a respiratory system diagnosis with ventilator support for greater than 96 hours, which was $40,218. Each of these average payments was then increased by 20% to account for the add-on to Medicare inpatient reimbursement for patients with COVID-19 that was included in the CARES Act.
Before accounting for the 20% add on, Medicare payments are about half of what private insurers pay on average for the same diagnoses. In the absence of this new proposed policy, many of the uninsured would typically be billed based on hospital charges, which are the undiscounted “list prices” for care and are typically much higher than even private insurance reimbursement.”
https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/estimated-cost-of-treating-the-uninsured-hospitalized-with-covid-19/
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/potential-costs-of-coronavirus-treatment-for-people-with-employer-coverage/
In case you were wondering, the reasons behind the 20% add on for patients diagnosed with Covid-19, are because according to the Kaiser Family Foundation Medicare already typically pays HALF what private insurers do, Medicare does not pay for additional PPE, Covid-19 patients often have the medical necessity of a private hospital room for quarantine purposes which Medicare does not normally cover and finally, the new Covid-19 coding allows hospital providers to bill for services they provide at alternate sites such as parking lot testing sites, convention centers or hotels, something we haven’t dealt with before but for which they obviously deserve to be reimbursed. The $13k/$39k figures are simply what it cost on average in 2017 to care for someone with respiratory illness in a hospital, it is NOT some “bonus” that anyone is receiving. That is a lie.
17:13 Dr. Mikovits claims that hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine has been safely used for 70 years to treat a wide range of illnesses for which the FDA has approved its’ use including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis but unfortunately, that is not the same thing as treating Covid-19, and Dr. Mikovits’ peers have come to very, very different conclusions about its’ application as a treatment for Covid-19:
“Data to support the use of HCQ and CQ for COVID-19 are limited and inconclusive. The drugs have some in vitro activity against several viruses, including coronaviruses and influenza, but previous randomized trials in patients with influenza have been negative (4, 5). In COVID-19, one small nonrandomized study from France (3) (discussed elsewhere in Annals of Internal Medicine [6]) demonstrated benefit but had serious methodological flaws, and a follow-up study still lacked a control group. Yet, another very small, randomized study from China in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 found no difference in recovery rates (7).”
https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2764199/use-hydroxychloroquine-chloroquine-during-covid-19-pandemic-what-every-clinician
“In this phase IIb randomized clinical trial of 81 patients with COVID-19, an unplanned interim analysis recommended by an independent data safety and monitoring board found that a higher dosage of chloroquine diphosphate for 10 days was associated with more toxic effects and lethality, particularly affecting QTc interval prolongation. The limited sample size did not allow the study to show any benefit overall regarding treatment efficacy.”
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2765499
In conclusion, this woman has a serious axe to grind with her peers and even her former collaborating colleagues. Her published research has been completely discredited by a dozen independent studies. This is why we have peer review of scientific claims - in order to discern real fact. Dr. Mikovits was to a receive $1.5M grant from NIAID herself, which she has now lost due to lack of scientific fact and lack of ethics. Sometimes I see a meme on Facebook that says something about how some people believe that scientists are conspiring to lie to them… like, why would scientists lie? They “lie” or more accurately, falsify data because believe it or not, science is even more competitive than the music industry and scientists can’t sell tickets to their show. In order to receive any money for doing science, one needs an expensive education and to be able to publish credible findings.
Dr. Mikovits cannot even be honest or discerning in relaying the truth about her legal issues, so I do not know why anyone would take any testimony by this person about anything with anything other than a large grain of salt and that is the nicest way I can say it.
where the the government getting all this money to spend right now? shouldn't we be saving because we certainly do not know how long this is going to affect the territory....we're just spending spending money where the money coming from? money going out how much coming in?