Some Doctors are Tele-Pretending to Practice Medicine

Among the numerous negative consequences for the survivors of the Chinese Covid-19 epidemic is the change in the practice of medicine and the lack of care extended to the rest of the population that did not get infected but needed medical care for so many other ailments that went untreated during the forced lockdown at the state and local levels.

The media kept lying to us every day how hospitals are overwhelmed with sick people yet thousands of nurses and doctors were furloughed, some were hired back, some weren’t, and others decided to retire instead of fighting the new twilight zone medical practice with all its CDC imposed infection controls and non-medical “social distancing,” arbitrarily set at 6 feet.

For the last five months, this “social distancing” has revealed itself as purposeful “social isolation” often going as far as forcing people to park their cars every other space in the parking lot, or use every other commode or sink in a public restroom.

We should not complain, at least some restrooms were open and we did not have to search in vain. In parks, they’ve closed them in April and the governor ordered port-o-potties brought in which the park rangers sprayed with Lysol in the morning in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19. The public restrooms, we were told, would have been too hard to sanitize.

And anglers could no longer fish on the pier, it was decreed, they had to scatter around the river bank. They promptly congregated under the railroad bridge, six feet apart or not, to share tall fishing tales.

People already afraid for their lives and driven into a panic by the non-stop public service announcements and the non-stop hyping of the casualties on all channels and 24-hour cable news, became so afraid to leave their homes that a trip to the “infectious” hospital was out of the question and suffered in silence locked in their homes. A few suffered heart attacks and, if they were lucky, survived to talk about it.

All my doctors kept sending me emails and text messages informing me that they will treat their patients now exclusively by various HIPAA-compliant tele-conferencing programs online, no doubt tele-pretending to treat my existing or future problems.

I am supposed to take my own blood pressure, how many times a minute I breathe, my oxygen intake at that moment, etc. Perhaps I need to buy other diagnostic machines normally found in a doctor’s office like a frontal temperature monitor, an EKG, and an oximeter. I draw the line at becoming my own phlebotomist.

It is sad to contemplate what would happen to our formerly stellar medical care now that one politicized virus has changed entirely the face of our country, including education, jobs, medical care, entertainment, travel, commerce, and professional sports. Only politics remained as corrupt as ever.

I can’t say that I will shed a tear for the demise of professional sports and of their highly paid players, but I am saddened that Americans will die before their time because of the lack of proper medical attention as the governors are forcing us indoors to escape Covid-19 until the expensive vaccine comes out.

Additionally, where will the rest of the world with large bank accounts come to treat their complicated medical problems their socialized medical systems can’t fix, if the best and the brightest American doctors and world-renowned surgeons are no longer practicing normal medicine but tele-pretending care?

There are still doctors out there replacing knees and setting broken bones and performing other surgeries that improve people’s lives, but general practitioners and some specialists are now switching their practice to tele-work, never touching their patients. Is this the kind of medicine we want?

Perhaps some of us are happier with this set up – no travel to someone’s office, no contact, no wait, etc. Except on a recent tele-conference with one of my doctors, I had to wait for her to show up online for more than an hour! A canned message kept telling me that she is tending to another patient and I should be patient.

We will never know how many Americans suffered at home because they were too afraid to go to a hospital for treatment, did not want to be on the Covid-19 tracing network and possibly home on an ankle bracelet if positive and refusing to sign self-quarantine documents, or did not have elective surgery because were unable to find a doctor who would do the surgery they needed and thus continued to suffer in pain and misery.

I am thankful for my mom’s doctor who treated her with the proper cocktail of medicines, HCQ, Z-pack, oxygen, and zinc and she survived her bout with pneumonia. But I wish some general practitioners and specialists in my town would get back to real medicine instead of hiding behind a computer and tele-pretending to practice medicine. Stop being afraid of your patients and please make eye contact with them, they are not body snatchers.

A Muzzle, a Face Diaper, a Mask

Given my experience with communism, I call the mask a “muzzle,” not a “face diaper” like my friend A.J. does. Why would I call it a muzzle that is normally put on a dog to prevent him from biting someone treating him or if unsure whether he is rabid or not?

Every fall In high school we had to pick grapes for two weeks instead of studying. During that harvest time we had to wear a “muzzle” so we would not eat the precious grapes destined for expensive wine for export or for the communist party members' tables.  

The face mask was not exactly made the same way as a current dog muzzle, it was just a mask, but we felt that we were treated inhumanely like dogs. Perhaps they were trying to shield us from harmful chemicals? The grapes were sprayed with chemicals, probably DDT, and we had no way of washing them in the vineyard.

The communist party did not care to provide us with water, much less a sandwich, we were doing "volunteer" labor for the good of the country.  But we were very hungry and probably would have eaten a few grapes to quell the hunger pains.

We did not have water bottles or thermoses to carry water ourselves to the field. A thermos was hard to find and very expensive, the proletariat could not afford such a luxury.

The 45 Goals of Communism W. Cleon Skousen Wrote About in 1958

Sixty-two years ago, W. Cleon Skousen published his book, “The Naked Communist.” At the time, few Americans probably thought that the goals of communism that shaped the Iron Curtain’s socialist countries ruled by the Communist Party and the Soviet satellite countries around the world would become the blueprint of our American society in 2020. In a mere 62 years we have achieved and implemented by various means 44 of the 45 goals of communism Skousen wrote about. (pp. 266-270, 2014 ed.)

In a highly liberal state like Virginia, cars sport various bumper stickers in support of Marxism, progressivism, the proletariat’s air bumping fists, and Coexist with various religious symbols. The leftist message is contradictory as Marxists are atheists, but they seem to approve of the curious alliance between world communism and Islam, while rejecting Christianity. (Goal #1)

Capitulation to peace and accepting nuclear disarmament while Iran is busy making their own nuclear weaponry promotes the leftist idea that destroying the U.S. capability to defend itself against the enemy is “moral strength.” (Goals #2 and #3) The ancient wisdom, Si vis pacem, para bellum, (If you want peace, prepare for war) is entirely rejected. Ardent lefties believe that only U.S. engages in “war mongering,” those who increase their nuclear arsenal are justified to do so.

Politicians and president after president promoted free trade with other nations including communist ones, generally to the detriment of the United States which had been paying heavy taxes on our exported goods to countries like China. We also shipped goods and technology to inimical countries without asking if they would be “used for war.” (Goal #4)

We extended loans and the “most favored nation” status to communist countries and long-term loans to Soviet Union and Soviet Satellites without many strings attached. (Goals #5 and #6)

The West recognized Red China and admitted it to the illustrious United Nations. East and West Germany were established as separate states under the supervision of the U.N. All Soviet satellites were extended individual representation in the U.N. (Goals #7, #8, and #10)

Communist countries believed six decades ago that the U.N. should be set up as a one world communist government. U.N. with its many affiliates are actually dictating today more and more how we do business, live, healthcare, wealth redistribution, climate change policies, housing, schooling, and how we handle pandemics such the Covid-19 one, all under the umbrella of sustainable development of the Agenda 2030 and its 17 sustainable development goals. (Goal #11)

The Communist Party has been outlawed in the former Iron Curtain countries, but it did not disappear. It went underground and regrouped to emerge even more powerful than before, having adopted capitalist ideas and a powerful technocracy, making them more effective than ever before. (Goal #12)

Loyalty oaths in the military, government organizations, and the courts of justice have been trampled in this country time and time again. (Goal #13)

Enemies from awful dictatorships have been given unfettered access to U.S. patents or stole technology that could be reverse engineered. (Goal #14)

The Democrat Party has been “captured” by the socialist/Marxist ideology and openly advocates the transformation of America from capitalism to socialism, the steppingstone to full communism. (Goal #15)

The courts at all levels have changed our Constitution and reversed Presidential decisions by “claiming their activities violate civil rights.” As a matter of fact, many such organization have taken up the cause of illegal aliens through the courts and through the state and local governments executive orders issued against American citizens’ best interests. (Goal #16)

Since the formation of the Department of Education in 1979 under Jimmy Carter’s administration, school curricula embraced socialist propaganda, diluted the standards of education, the Marxists took control of teacher associations and used textbooks written by self-defined socialists, filled with communist propaganda and revisionist history built around the social justice communist activism. Student newspapers were highjacked. Student riots “fomented public protest” against organizations they deemed as evil capitalism. (Goals #17,18,19)

Communists infiltrated the mainstream media, theater, art, movies, sports, and television programming. The kneeling in organized sports became another form of socialist protest against capitalism. (Goals #20, 21)

American culture is under attack under the moniker “cancel culture,” Publicly shaming people for their “outdated ideas” of patriotism, American exceptionalism, love of country, and its history.

It is not coincidental that BLM and ANTIFA have been destroying statues. Skousen wrote, “An American communist cell was told to ‘eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward, and meaningless forms’ in its stead. (Goal #22)

Art, art critics, museums are to be discredited and beautiful and creative works are to be replaced with “ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.” (Goal #23) Spray painting and toppling beautiful statues because it “offends” the Marxist rioters has become a common occurrence while the mayors tell the police to stand down. (Goal #23)

Obscenity, pornography, promiscuity, and degeneracy are promoted as “normal, natural, and healthy.” Standards of morality are destroyed. (Goals #24, 25, 26)

Atheism and the religion of “social justice” and Mother Earth (Gaia) are replacing faith. Churches are being taken over by Marxist priests propagandizing socialism and social justice to the submissive parishioners, while schools are eliminating religion and prayer from its grounds under the manufactured “separation of church and state” even though they are more than eager to promote and teach Islam in the curriculum. (Goal #27, 28)

Schools and academia have been discrediting the American Constitution as outdated and in need of replacing, perhaps by a U.N. global constitution. The Founding Fathers are presented as “selfish aristocrats.” American culture is belittled, and the teaching of history transformed into a Marxist propaganda in which the “white supremacy” and the “evil white man” must be disposed of and replaced with the manufactured history of Howard Zinn. (Goals #29, 30, 31)

Give education, social agencies, welfare programs, child services, and mental health clinics control over the American culture. Change or eliminate laws that interfere with socialist/communist activities, discredit the FBI, police, and other law and order organizations, infiltrate and control all unions, and big business. (Goal #32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37)

Discredit the police, defund the police, and transform the power of arrest, law, and order, to social agencies. We have seen this in action for the past few months. (Goal #38)

Treat all problems as psychiatric disorders, treat children with psychiatric drugs, use psychiatric diagnosis for all who oppose Marxism, discredit the family as a viable institution for the survival of our culture, promote easy divorce and promiscuity, and take children away from parents who teach them morality, patriotism, and love for our country. (Goals #39, 40, 41)

This communist goal is playing before our eyes today - “Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ‘united force’ to solve economic, political, or social problems.” (Goal #42)

BLM and ANTIFA protesters engaged in violence, destruction, arson, and looting, following the death of George Floyd during an altercation with the police. From this unfortunate event, the riots became more organized, more targeted, and better armed. The protests and riots morphed into “American society is intolerant, participates in manufactured systemic racism and white privilege and must be replaced with Marxists.”

The last three goals of communism refer to ousting colonial governments, “internationalize the Panama Canal,” and give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals. (Goals #43, 44, 45)

In a mere four months, the panic and abject fear of a flu virus have transformed Americans into obedient socialists wearing masks everywhere in stifling heat when perfectly healthy. Even the President finally gave in and said that it is patriotic to wear one and people cheered.

Americans are playing in the hands of our communist enemies, bowing obediently to Marxist domestic groups destroying our cities, to corrupt socialist politicians, socialist teachers and professors, dishonest medical professionals, and wealthy individuals with a nefarious agenda.

It is sad to say that, for our country, all but one of the communist goals W. Cleon Skousen described in 1958 have come to fruition. We are divided more than ever as a society and the domestic and international puppet masters are playing us against each other with great success.

The renowned scholar Thomas Sowell said, “Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”

The Forgotten Casualties of Covid-19: The Abandoned Resident in Nursing Homes

As people fight each other in stores, public places, streets, and parks over the governments’ unconstitutional mandate for healthy people to wear masks in stifling heat, indoors, outdoors, in their own cars alone, or start fights with perfect strangers they insult for their selfishness that endangers their fragile health and existence in the air space they breathe, how dare they pollute the air that may kill them with a deadly virus, and snitch on perfect strangers on websites and to employers because their employees dare to wear the mask improperly below their noses or took it off to answer the phone in order to be heard by the other party on the line, a large group of a different kind of Covid-19 victims is being ignored – people in nursing homes.

The elderly in nursing homes have health issues that are not being properly addressed. Some die alone and are buried hurriedly without any loved ones present. Some residents are Covid-negative, some are Covid-positive asymptomatic, and some have long recovered from their bout with pneumonia.

Residents are locked up away from their relatives and friends, unable to go to the specialists they need, unable to even get out to the parking lot in their wheelchairs to get fresh air and sunshine. Upon return from such a potential trip, they would have to be isolated for 14 days.

These forgotten Americans are denied trips to the barber or the beauty salon.  They cannot go out to have a meal with their families in a restaurant, they must stay locked up indefinitely.

Some residents have incipient dementia and do understand and feel more deeply the non-ending isolation and abandonment. Others have a more severe form of dementia and do not understand what is going on, why they cannot open the windows or why they cannot come out of their rooms anymore, why they cannot wheel themselves on the corridors to visit with other residents, to have more human contact than just the nurse on duty or the CNA taking care of them for that week.

Families kept at bay can only imagine the fear and frustration of their loved ones who believe that they have been abandoned for good, never seeing a familiar and loved face in months.

Residents are not allowed any activities, no church services, no stimulation from human contact, no visitors reading to them, talking to them, or praying with them. Phone calls are seldom answered. The nurses and other caretakers are too busy, afraid to go to work, and overwhelmed, we were told.

The nursing home administrator blames the mighty Health Department who oversees the fate of the nursing home residents. The home is blameless and there is only so much they can do to keep the loved ones comfortable. I cannot imagine how comfortable a resident is who has been in lockdown since mid-March to the point that they cannot leave their rooms and all doors must be shut.

Virginia’s first district, Rep. Rob Wittman, assured families that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have announced new initiatives “designed to protect nursing home residents from coronavirus.” He and Rep. Abigail Spanberger (VA-07) have asked the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “provide increased emergency funding to all long-term care facilities, in addition to the nearly $4.9 billion distribution to nursing home facilities impacted by Covid-19 which he supported.”

HHS authorized $5 billion relief fund to “Medicare-certified long-term care facilities and state veterans’ homes, to build nursing home skills and enhance response to COVID-19, including enhanced infection control.”

CMS will now require, not just recommend, that “all nursing homes in states with a 5% positivity rate or greater test all nursing home staff each week, identifying asymptomatic carriers. More than 15,000 testing devices will be deployed over the next few months to help support this mandate.”

The Trump administration “deployed federal Task Force Strike Teams to provide onsite technical assistance and education to nursing homes experiencing outbreaks in an effort to reduce transmission and the risk of Covid-19 spread among residents.” The teams are composed of “clinicians and public health personnel from CMS, CDC, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health.”  

Since the residents are locked up in their rooms and families are not allowed in, it is obvious that the spread occurs from the staff and caretakers in the nursing homes.

Since May 2020, CMS and CDC have collected weekly data on each nursing home and numbers of Covid-19 cases. The compiled data reached the White House and CMS will send to states a list of nursing homes with an increase in cases each week, thus outlining the highest risk nursing homes.  https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/trump-administration-announces-new-resources-protect-nursing-home-residents-against-covid-19

In the meantime, while you are hysterically afraid to go to work in your cushy government office, your classroom composed of low risk students, are afraid to eat in a restaurant, or are afraid to come anywhere near another human being before having an irrational meltdown, think about the nursing home residents who have not left their locked-down rooms and buildings since mid-March and their families have not seen them.

Not Just Facebook Jail, But Facebook Gulag for 30 Days

As a result of my recent article at Canada Free Press about the Facebook censorship of conservatives and the thousands of fact checkers assigned to each conservative account, I have been barred from going live on Facebook for 30 days. The "convenient" excuse was a photograph I shared three months ago!

The photograph in question depicted Jewish people being loaded onto trains destined for concentration camps during World War II, with the caption, I am paraphrasing, that they were told to load up peacefully because it was for their own good.

I have been assigned, as of today, July 24, 30-day Facebook "going live" silence for having posted a photograph, which is factual, THREE months ago on April 24.

The hired "fact-checkers" constantly use liberal publications as sources of "facts." These sources of facts are often wrong, partially true, biased, or purposefully misconstrued.

Facebook's "moderators," who possibly have never taken a real history lesson in their ignorant lives, found this photo in violation of Facebook's Orwellian community standards because it described how easily Jews were led to trains and to the gas chambers during World War II.

Apparently historical facts are offensive to the Facebook owners and to their hired "moderators," serving as 'fact-checkers" for $16 an hour. They often quote Snopes and USA Today as sources of fact.

Freedom of speech is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and offensive speech is protected but Facebook is the ultimate decision-maker on its social platform as to who gets to have free speech and who does not. It seems that conservatives lose every time their right to speak.

Orwell's "1984" has already arrived and the tech monopoly proves it every day.

The important question to be answered is, is Facebook a social platform, or is Facebook a publisher?

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Post Scriptum - It seems that my 30-day Facebook suspension refers to being unable to "go live." I have no idea what that means since I have not gone live on Facebook and have no intention to do so at this moment.

Facebook conveniently proved my Canada Free Press article point that Facebook most certainly does suspend conservative users by suspending ME.

War on Cash and One World Currency

Money greases the wheels of exchange, and thus makes the whole economy more productive. The idea that everything should be cashless is problematic for so many reasons. Bartering is a good under certain circumstances and societies, but it relies on what Keynesian economists call a “double coincidence of wants,” making it less desirable than cash.

Cash is easier because it is a convenient medium of exchange, sometimes free from government prying eyes, a unit of account for quoting prices, and a store of value as long as the trust in government is not eroded and inflation is low.

Cash is lightweight, can have large denominational value, does not spoil, and is thus better than commodity money, i.e., cigarettes, bullets, chocolate, jewelry, gold coins, pelts, furs, soap, etc.

From the government’s perspective, it is easy to see why they would want a cashless society. Banning cash under the guise of it being infected by disease, of controlling money laundering of criminals and drug lords, and routing all of our income, every last penny through the banking system helps them better control everything we do, freezing accounts at will, while taxation becomes so much easier, including payments to Obamacare insurance and any financial penalties an individual is required to pay. It enables governments to track with 100 percent accuracy everything we buy and sell, everything we own, and everything we do.

From the people’s perspective, cash is freedom, but the leftist main stream media is attacking it with pathetic excuses such as cash is physically dirty, expensive, potentially criminal, and obsolete 19^th century technology, happily promoting the “war on cash.”

The media’s opposition sees the “war on cash” as another form of population control when people’s accounts can be raided and their owners classified as potential domestic terrorists, or denied healthcare, travel, education, and other services if they are marked with a “digital star.”

The issues with a cashless society are too many to mention them all:

-          Total control by the state or its proxy

-          Savings could result from not using special paper, printing, ink, labor, and metal alloys but then those in the trade would become unemployed

-          If an attack occurs on the Smart Grid and there is no power, there are no financial transactions possible without some cash, a substitute, or barter

-          In the event of a national disaster, i.e., earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, tornado, power outages, transactions can be made by cash, commodity money, or barter

-          An EMP attack or intense solar flares would make cash or one world currency worthless and people will resort to theft

-          A cashless or global currency would give banks extraordinary power with no cap on interest rates or their control

-          Cashless transaction will always be traceable and thus the person’s location

-          One world currency in a cashless market would eliminate exchange rates, currency trading futures, eliminate a substantial sector of the job market and thus revenues

-          Black markets and illegal activities would be eliminated, and everyone will be forced to pay taxes on every penny

-          Children under 18 would be excluded from holding credit cards and thus excluded from financial transactions without cash; no more grandma cash gifts, lawn mowing money, or rainy-day cash savings in a jar

-          Prostitution will have to be legalized and client’s names become public record

-          Billions of Muslims would lose hawala transactions which are based on cash

-          Conducting monetary policy about money stock will be altered as cash disappears and one world government such as the U.N. would have to do it

-          Labor will be purchased and sold with electronic credits and debits

-          How would the value of one world currency be decided? Will it be tied to gold, silver, platinum, or some other precious metal or decided arbitrarily by the United Nations?

-          The destabilization of economies via counterfeit currency between countries would be eliminated as a tactic of war if only one currency exists

-          What would cyber attacks do to a single grid of digital money?

-          What would happen to third world nations that are not so electronically wired and depend heavily on cash and barter? How could they possibly make transactions in digital money?

-          Would there be electronic counterfeit of digital currency across the globe and who would police it? http://canadafreepress.com/article/what-would-the-world-be-like-without-cash-or-with-one-currency

Yet “The Bank of International Settlements is getting headlines again because of its direction of central banks to go cashless.” https://www.technocracy.news/the-dark-past-of-the-bank-for-international-settlements/

Coin Shortage

As if the global economic disaster caused by the Chinese Covid-19 viral pandemic was not bad enough, the looming global “coin shortage” and the “unknown pneumonia” (Covid-20?) in Kazakhstan are here. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kazakhstan-chinese-officials-warn-of-new-unknown-pneumonia-that-is-deadlier-than-coronavirus/ar-BB16yZ3C

Why exactly do we have a coin shortage?

-          Banks tell us that the Fed are not releasing enough coins.

-          Armstrong Economics wrote that faith in governments has been eroded. It sees governments as promoters of the idea that money is dirty, and the solution is to eliminate coins and paper money even though physical money as a medium of exchange has been in circulation for centuries.

-          The U.S. Treasury reported a disruption in the coin supply chain and its velocity of circulation due to the lockdowns and the huge reduction in consumption in the last four months of forced lockdowns in all 50 states. People shopped mostly for food and avoided all other venues of direct commerce for fear of Covid-19 infection and because so many places were closed. Many shopped online or in large retailers like Costco, Target, Walmart, and Amazon.

-          Allegedly, the U.S. Mint has minted less coins to protect employees from COVID-19. It is an interesting issue to ponder since minting coins and printing paper currency are highly automated operations, with expensive computers driving the printing and minting presses and requiring very few employees, mostly in checking roles to make sure the machines run properly and the mint/print are done correctly, as well as controlling the quality of each batch that is bound and packaged for distribution and circulation.

-          Some central banks are sterilizing money with UV light to prevent the spread of viral infections.

-          The Fed purportedly quarantined for ten days U.S. dollars returning from Europe and Asia. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/economics/hoarding-cash-2/

The U.S. Treasury sees the current coin shortage in U.S. businesses as a decrease in velocity of various coins in circulation. The Treasury estimated the value of coins in circulation in April 2020 of $47.8 billion as an adequate coin supply, larger than last year’s supply of coins by at least half a billion. But the closing of retail shops, many permanently, bank branches, transit authorities, and laundromats due to Covid-19 fears, eliminated the typical places where coins enter circulation.

Nobody knows exactly if people are hoarding coins on purpose or if the businesses that have closed temporarily or permanently have cleared out all their cash registers of coins and paper currency.

“The coin supply chain includes many participants, from the U.S. Mint who produces new coin, to the Federal Reserve who distributes coin on the U.S. Mint’s behalf, to armored carriers, banks, retailers and consumers, all of whom have a role to play in helping to resolve this issue.” 

On June 11, the Federal Reserve announced the Strategic Allocation of Coin Inventories which was a temporary coin order allocation in all Reserve Bank offices and Federal Reserve coin distribution locations effective June 15, 2020.

The Federal Reserve also established a U.S. Coin Task Force in early July to deal with disruptions to normal coin circulation.  All interested parties participated – U.S. Mint, Federal Reserve, armored carriers, American Bankers Association, Independent Community Bankers Association, National Association of Federal Credit Unions, Coin aggregator representatives, and retail trade industry. https://www.frbservices.org/news/communications/063020-federal-reserve-convenes-us-coin-task-force.html

The Federal Reserve said that “it is confident that the coin inventory issues will resolve once the economy opens more broadly and the coin supply chain returns to normal circulation patterns, however, “it recognizes that these measures alone will not be enough to resolve near-term issues.”