TRUMP WATCH: 4.27.19 - Diplomacy: 'Deal of the century' will set new baseline for Mideast diplomacy

Diplomacy: 'Deal of the century' will set new baseline for Mideast diplomacy - By Herb Keinon -

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Diplomacy-Deal-of-the-century-will-set-new-baseline-for-Mideast-diplomacy-587806

 

The Trump peace plan may be less about reaching a final settlement now, and more about setting down new parameters for a changed reality.

 

In a twist to the "after-the-hagim [holidays]" line ubiquitous here around Passover and Rosh Hashanah, Jared Kushner - US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser - said Tuesday that the long-awaited Trump peace blueprint will be rolled out "after Ramadan."

 

"We were getting ready [to roll out the plan] at the end of last year, and then they called for Israeli elections," Kushner said at the 2019 TIME 100 Summit trumpeting the magazine's selection last week of the 100 most influential people in the world. "Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu had a great victory, and he's in the middle of forming his coalition. Once that's done, we'll probably be in the middle of Ramadan. So we'll wait until after Ramadan and then we'll put our plan out."

 

Or not.

 

This is not the first time the "after Ramadan" timetable has been used by this administration in reference to when it will present its "deal of the century."

 

In the beginning of 2018, reports emerged that the plan would be released in the spring; in the spring the reports were that it would be released after Ramadan in June; after Ramadan the speculation was that it would be released in early fall. By then, however, people speculated - correctly, as it turned out - that it would not be released before the US midterm elections on November 6, so as not to do anything to alienate Trump's strongly pro-Israel Evangelical base.

 

In September, Trump said that he would be releasing the plan in two to four months. But then the new Israeli elections were called in December, and it became clear that the plan would not be issued during the campaign, so as not to complicate matters for Netanyahu.

 

If Netanyahu now needs all 42 days at his disposal to form a government, that period will end on May 29. Ramadan is expected to begin this year on May 7, and end on June 4. Which means that on June 5 the moon and stars will be aligned just right for the rollout of the plan.

 

Realistically, there will then be about a three-month window for the plan to be presented, until America's Labor Day, September 2, when the US presidential election campaign will shift into high gear before the primaries in the first six months of 2020. And during that campaign, Trump will again be averse to doing anything that might alienate his strongly pro-Israel Evangelical base.

 

Kushner sounded resolute Tuesday about presenting the plan, but so did Trump himself last September, only to be overtaken by events. New reasons may be found after Ramadan to postpone its presentation as well.

 

For instance, perhaps Netanyahu, saddled with a hard-right government that he knows will not support some of the concessions that Israel will inevitably be asked to make under the plan, may ask Trump not to unveil it, so as not to endanger his government.

 

Or perhaps Trump will listen to some voices being raised in Washington entreating him not to present a plan that has no chance of succeeding - primarily because the Palestinians have already rejected it, sight unseen - since to do so would only make a bad situation worse.

 

One of the more prominent voices in this school of thought is that of Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Two weeks ago, he wrote a piece on the Foreign Policy magazine's website calling on Trump not to present his plan, saying it faced sure rejection and as a result would set back US interests in three critical areas: "It might lead to annexation of the West Bank; it could give the Saudi government leverage over the United States that it doesn't currently have; and it would distract from Trump's signature achievement of putting real pressure on Iran's government."

 

According to Satloff's logic, the current Israeli-Palestinian status quo is far from perfect, but it has led to a "reasonably well-functioning governing entity" in the West Bank, keeping it from becoming a "platform for rocket and terrorist attacks against Israel."

 

This status quo would come tumbling down, he warned, if Abbas rejects the plan - as he has said he would. "In turn, Israeli rightists will seize on Abbas's 'no' to argue that Israel has no negotiating partner, gutting a key rationale for keeping the status quo alive."

 

In addition, he argued, the plan will need major Saudi backing to succeed, giving the Saudis dangerous leverage over US policy, and it would also "distract from the president's signature achievement in the Middle East: the unexpectedly effective impact of the so-called maximum pressure campaign on Iran."

 

ON TUESDAY, however, Kushner did not sound like someone who was going to jettison a plan he has been working on for two years. While revealing nothing of the blueprint's details - including whether it would advocate a two-state solution - he did say that the Trump peace team is trying a different approach.

 

"We've tried to do it a little bit differently," Kushner said. "Normally, they [Mideast mediators] start with a process and then hope that the process leads to a resolution for something to happen. What we've done is the opposite. We've done very extensive research and a lot of talking to a lot of people. We're not trying to impose our will. I think the document that you will see, which is a very detailed proposal, is something we created by engaging a lot of people in the region, and people who have worked on this in the past.

 

"I hope it is a very comprehensive vision for what can be, if people are willing to make some hard decisions. So what we've done is we started with a proposed solution, and then we will work on a process to try to get there."

 

In other words, instead of getting a negotiating process rolling that the organizers hope will then lead the sides to come to some kind of an agreement, the Trump administration is working backward: present a comprehensive solution first, and then figure out how to get there.

 

There are various reasons, diplomatic officials have explained, for this approach, one of which is the realization that the Trump administration - which Netanyahu has said is the most supportive administration Israel has ever worked with - will not be there forever, and that it could indeed be turned out of office in November 2020.

 

That being the case, the administration has some 20 months in which it can put down new markers on Middle East issues and set new parameters.

 

There is a sense that the political pendulum in the US swings drastically from one extreme to the next - from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, and then from Obama to Trump - and that it could next swing to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Beto O'Rourke.

 

As such, one of the aims of the plan - which even the most optimistic in the Trump peace team must realize has a slim chance of success, considering the numerous forces already lining up against it, including the PA, some European countries and the EU foreign policy bureaucracy in Brussels - is perhaps less about reaching a final settlement now, and more about setting down a new set of facts: new parameters.

 

This administration, which in addition to Trump includes strong pro-Israel voices such as those of Vice President Mike Pence, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, does not want to leave Washington with the last American statement on the Middle East being Obama's decision in the waning days of his term in 2016 not to veto an anti-settlement resolution in the UN Security Council, thereby placing the bulk of the onus for the stalemated peace process on Israel.

 

The administration also does not want the final word on the matter to be the Clinton Parameters of 2000 - guidelines for a permanent-status agreement based on a Palestinian state on 94%-96% of the territories and with Jerusalem as the capital of two states.

 

Much has changed since then - the Second Intifada and the Gaza withdrawal have changed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the "Arab Spring" has fundamentally changed the Middle East - and it is expected that the Trump plan will reflect those changes, something that could set the narrative for the next decade, just as the Clinton Parameters have dominated the conversation on peacemaking since 2000.

 

The plan, whose details have remained a closely guarded secret, is expected to be based around a set of principles: significantly improving Palestinian lives; safeguarding Israeli security; Jerusalem as Israel's capital, though the borders there may be negotiable; not uprooting anyone from anywhere, including Jews in the settlements; a new definition of refugees; and some kind of Palestinian state, though likely to be along the lines of Netanyahu's idea of a state-minus.

 

Animating the discussion on Israel inside the administration since Trump took power in 2017 is the sense that Israel is America's most important ally in the Middle East, and that - as such - Washington does not want to weaken it in any way. A call to uproot settlements, which would lead to significant domestic strife, is seen by some in the administration as a move that could significantly weaken Israel, and as such something that should be avoided.

 

Likewise, the US does not want to weaken Jordan - another key Mideast ally - and as such does not want to set up a possible failed state in the West Bank that could threaten the Hashemite Kingdom. With enough problems already on its northern border with Syria and on its eastern border with Iraq, the last thing Jordan needs is a failed state on its western frontier.

 

The administration, which has devoted a lot of time and man hours to the plan, obviously hopes that it will be accepted - when it is eventually presented.

 

Kushner, during his comments on Tuesday, said that when the sides look at the proposal, "I am hopeful that what they'll do is to say, 'Look, there are some compromises here, but at the end of the day this is really a framework that can allow us to make our lives all materially better.' And we'll see if the leadership on both sides has the courage to take the lead to try to go forward."

 

And, if not, at least a new marker will have been set.

 

Even some sharp critics of Trump's foreign policy, such as Richard Haas, a former US diplomat who is now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledge that the time has come to look at the Middle East differently.

 

In a piece this week in Project Syndicate where he said that there is little chance that the Trump plan would succeed, he nevertheless concluded that: "It is time for a paradigm shift in how we think about the Middle East, not because a better diplomatic model has presented itself (it has not), but because the current paradigm is increasingly at odds with reality."

 

 

The coup intensifies - Bill Wilson -

www.harvest.org

 

While President Donald Trump's approval rating continues to decline in the aftermath of the Democratic Party and media onslaught about obstruction of justice in the Mueller Report-what the report specifically says that there were no charges levied, the Democratic coup-makers continue to fabricate a narrative that the President should be impeached. This is nothing short of a nearly three-year campaign to remove a duly-elected president from office while the real business of running the nation, solving its many challenges, and the divisive visceral continues by opposition to the President. Yet there is no substantial evidence to back the claims while the media continues hammering away at all facets of the administration.

 

The battle is evident: partisan party politics, not what is best for America. Trump identified it in a sentence when he told the Washington Post that he didn't want former members of his Administration testifying before Congress. He said, "I don't want people testifying to a party, because that is what they're doing if they do this." The "this" is referring to former White House personnel security director Carl Kline, who was subpoenaed by Democrats who are "investigating" anything and everything they can about Trump. Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md), chairman of the House Oversight Committee stated: "It appears that the president believes that the Constitution does not apply to this White House...that he may obstruct attempts by Congress to conduct oversight."

 

This is the buzz word in the coup-inspired narrative-obstruction. The Democrats believe that the Mueller Report didn't go far enough to bring obstruction of justice charges against Trump. So they are taking it upon themselves to label Trump as an obstructionist by investigating everything they can think of, including his tax returns for the past six years. AP reports that

 

Trump and his business organization sued Cummings to block a subpoena that seeks years of the president's financial records. The complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, said a subpoena from Cummings "has no legitimate legislative purpose" and accused the Democrats of harassing Trump.

 

CBS reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) held a conference call with the chairs of several powerful committees to discuss the Democrat's path forward following the Mueller Report. She told the Democrat leaders (sic coup leaders) that the House should continue committee investigations into the president. This current onslaught is a coup-narrative designed to shout obstruction while at the same time the Democrats are obstructing the business of America and the functions of government. As in 1 Timothy 3:16, "But evil men and seducers shall grow worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived." Take heed that you are not deceived by these people.

 

The coup-makers frenzy - Bill Wilson -

www.dailyjot.com

 

Rasmussen Reports is the only reliable source that is tacking presidential approval ratings across America. It indicates that the three day average prior to April before the redacted Mueller Report was released to the public President Donald Trump's approval rating was 53%. After the release, the average dropped to 49%, despite no new revelations against the President. During that time, the news media and the Democratic Party leadership doubled down on their "obstruction" narrative and started reading the "impeachment" word from their shared talking points. This is evidence of the power of the negative attacks in just a few hours. It is also the markings of one more coup attempt by the neo-communists.

 

Abandoned is any pretense of the facts. Just as predicted by The Daily Jot, these coup-makers are pointing toward the part in the report about not exonerating Trump on obstruction of justice, although not finding enough grounds to suggest legal action against the president or his associates. So now the leftists in Congress believe they know better than the person they essentially hand-picked to conduct an investigation that they believed would affirm their wildest accusations. It didn't, leaving the door open for further Congressional investigations, subpoenas and, of course, continued media bombardment that the president is a criminal.

 

This totally ignores the facts, AND the need to get on with working to solve some of the very challenges America elected both these Congressional obstructionists and the president to solve. Mueller, however, left the door wide open for the coup-makers to continue their obstruction of government and communist-style investigations at taxpayer expense for as long as they would like. But the report "identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent, each of which, under the Department's principles of federal prosecution guiding charging decisions, would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to establish an obstruction-of justice offense."

 

It doesn't matter to the coup-makers. They are playing the public opinion game. In a 24-hour period, they chipped away at the president's job approval rating, and they will continue their false and negative narrative so long as they see it working. . So the coup will continue with the coup-makers demanding further investigations. It is time We the People demand an end to this nonsensical cover up to the dastardly doings with Russia by the Clintons, the immediate past president and the Democratic National Committee. But then again, as Jeremiah 6:14 states, "They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace."

 

 While the nation perishes - Bill Wilson -

www.dailyjot.com

 

Daily Jot sources with first-hand knowledge of the situation at the US-Mexico border have been expressing frustration about the lack of attention the crisis is receiving in Washington, D.C. When asked if the conditions there were as bad as being reported, one source said, "Far worse." Concerns are that the crossings into the US are bringing with them disease, drugs, crime, and most unfortunately, human trafficking. Facilities are stressed to the max. Border patrol personnel are frustrated, and there seems to be no end in sight to throttle the massive invasion coming through Mexico to the US. One reliable inside source gave a detailed assessment of the problems, which are well known to those trying to deal with them.

 

He writes, "For you information, I saw a Memo today that says in the first six months of this fiscal year (Oct-Mar), the U.S. Border Patrol reported 361,000 apprehensions across the Southwest border. This exceeds all apprehensions in Fiscal Year 2017, and is twice as many compared to this timeframe last year. Over 225,000 of those apprehended - 62 percent - are family units and unaccompanied children mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The Memo went on to say these vulnerable populations need a special level of care while in custody and the Border Patrol simply does not have facilities or the personnel needed to care for, transport and process them, and "In short, this crisis has overwhelmed the Border Patrol's capacity and resources.""

 

He continued: "I personally don't know the conditions in those three named countries. If something could be done to help those small countries so their own citizens could have a hope to build a life in their own land, it would help on all fronts. There are those in Congress who are complaining that President Trump isn't doing anything about that....but one can't ignore the crisis at the Border either...Politicians should come together to address both sides of the problem....Oh wait, that's the REAL problem, isn't it? They are politicians and not leaders!! Wasting all their time attacking each other and NEVER ADDRESSING, LET ALONE SOLVING, ANY REAL PROBLEMS OR ISSUES FACING THE PEOPLE OF OUR OWN COUNTRY. The whole of Congress is a disgrace - each individual, bar none - for their failure to lead."

 

Ezekiel 22:30 is often quoted as an encouraging verse. Part A says, "And I sought for a man among them, that should build up the wall, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it." What is often not quoted from this verse is the rest of it. Part B says, "but I found none." America is in a position right now that there are no statesmen to light the way to solve our many challenges. They are too busy fighting one another, standing in the path of progress, while the enemy floods the gaps in the wall. So many people ask me "What can be done." It is so difficult to say. It starts with prayer. May we come to unity in faith, wisdom and action. We need those who will stand in the gap that we as a people do not perish.

 

 

 

 

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The Feast of First Fruits

The Feast of First Fruits - Jack Kelley -

https://gracethrufaith.com/topical-studies/holidays-and-holy-days/the-feast-of-first-fruits/

 

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. - 1 Cor 15:20

 

The LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest. He is to wave the sheaf before the LORD so it will be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath. On the day you wave the sheaf, you must sacrifice as a burnt offering to the LORD a lamb a year old without defect, together with its grain offering of two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil-an offering made to the LORD by fire, a pleasing aroma and its drink offering of a quarter of a hin of wine. You must not eat any bread, or roasted or new grain, until the very day you bring this offering to your God. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live. (Lev. 23:9-14)

 

Three Spring Feasts

 

Often overlooked because Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread overshadow and surround it, I think the Feast of First Fruits is the most important Feast of them all-at least from a Christian point of view. It's easy to miss its importance, since the Gospel accounts don't even mention First Fruits and also seem to use Passover and Unleavened Bread interchangeably. Because of this, it can be hard to tell there were actually three feasts being celebrated at once.

 

Although it's not obvious from the passage above, the Lord was referring to the Sabbath that comes after the Passover. While the Passover can fall on any day of the week which also happens to be the 14th day of the first month, the Feast of First Fruits is always the following Sunday, the day after the Sabbath after Passover. Unleavened Bread begins on Passover and lasts seven days, so First Fruits comes before Unleavened Bread ends.

 

The year the Lord was crucified, Passover fell on a Thursday. Three days and three nights later it was Sunday morning, the Feast of First Fruits. And for several hundred years afterward, the Sunday morning after Passover was known to Christians as Resurrection Morning.

 

What Day Is It?

 

But at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, Eastern and Western bishops of the Church disagreed over the official date for the Church's most important Holy Day. Eastern bishops favored staying with the calculation involving Passover as Leviticus describes, since many of them were of Jewish origin, and since the Gospels had placed Resurrection Morning just after Passover.

 

Western bishops, being mostly Gentile, favored a date closer to the beginning of spring because there were already a number of pagan festivals held during that time and a religious holiday would fit right in. Perhaps this is when the Western church began referring to Resurrection Morning as Easter Sunday, after the Babylonian fertility goddess Ishtar. The Feast of Ishtar was always celebrated at the beginning of spring and involved eggs and rabbits and other signs of fertility. Even today, you can see how elements of the two have been merged together.

 

Eventually, (due in part to their view that since the Jews had rejected Christ Jewish traditions shouldn't be used in selecting the date for Easter), the Western Church settled on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Soon Easter Sunday became disconnected from Passover by as much as several weeks.

 

The adoption of the Gregorian calendar (the one we use in the west today) in 1752 did nothing to correct this disconnect, and since the Eastern or Orthodox Church stuck with the earlier Julian calendar, we now have two dates for Easter in most years. (In 2004, the Feast of First Fruits, and Orthodox and Western Easter all came on the same day, a rare occasion.)

 

The Common Practice

 

But back to the Feast of First Fruits. Grains were planted in the fall in Israel. They germinated in the ground through the winter, shot up as soon as the weather got warm, and ripened in the spring, barley first and then wheat. The stalks were cut and stacked in sheaves for the harvesters to collect for thrashing. But harvesting or eating any of the grain was not permitted until a sample sheaf was brought to the Temple at sunrise on the first day after the Sabbath following Passover. This day was called the Feast of First Fruits. A similar ceremony for the wheat harvest took place on Pentecost, also a Sunday, seven weeks later.

 

As you know, the Lord required the first fruits of all their harvest be given to Him, whether plant or animal. (In the case of animals, only the very first offspring of each animal was required, not the first of each season. For humanity, a small ransom was paid at the Temple to redeem the firstborn son. (The Lord expressly forbade any form of child sacrifice.)

 

The priest took the sheaf of grain and waved it before the altar of the Lord as a sample of the harvest. This was called the wave offering. To be sure it was acceptable to the Lord, a year old lamb was also offered, along with about 4 quarts of flour and oil mixture and a quart of wine. The mixing fragrances of the roasting lamb, the baking bread dough, and the steam from the wine made a pleasant aroma for the Lord, and the offering was accepted. The Lord having received His required first portion, the harvest could proceed, and the grain could be ground into flour for their daily bread.

 

The Prophetic Fulfillment

 

At sunrise on the morning of the Feast of First Fruits in 32 AD, as the priests were waving the sheaf of grain before the altar, the women arrived at the Lord's tomb to prepare His body for permanent burial. Remember, there wasn't enough time before sunset on the day He was crucified and the following two days were both Sabbaths, so no work was permitted. (Interestingly, work was allowed on the Feast of First Fruits, although not on Pentecost.)

 

But the tomb was empty. He had risen, the First Fruits of them that slept. (1 Cor. 15:20) Later that day many Holy people from Israel's past were seen in the city of Jerusalem, also having risen from their tombs. (Matt. 27:53) This was the Lord's wave offering, a sample of His harvest of souls. I think the aroma of the Temple offering was especially pleasing to the Lord that morning. The days of substitutes were over; the real thing had come. (Hebr. 10:1)

 

The Ultimate Triple Play

 

For Christ, our Passover Lamb had been sacrificed (1 Cor. 5:7), and on the very day, fulfilling the Passover Prophecy. For seven days beginning on Passover, the Israelites ate bread without yeast in celebration of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and in fact went to great lengths to rid their homes of any trace of leaven. This Feast symbolized a promise that the sin of man, represented by the leaven, would be completely taken away. The Lord's death fulfilled this one as well, for He's the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. (John 1:29) And take it away He did, as far as the East is from the West. (Psalm 103:12)

 

And right on schedule, the Lord rose from the grave, fulfilling the Feast of First Fruits. He is the First Fruits of them that slept, and His resurrection confirmed His victory over sin and death. And ours too, for if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom. 10:9) Selah

 

 

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Horrifying 'Super Bug' Finally Divulged to the World

Horrifying 'Super Bug' Finally Divulged to the World - By Geri Ungurean - https://www.raptureready.com/2019/04/16/horrifying-super-bug-finally-divulged-world-geri-ungurean/

 

I remember years ago I had a doctor who refused to give me antibiotics. One year I went to see him four times in three months, complaining of constant coughing, tightness in my chest, difficulty breathing and fever. The fourth time I saw him, he said that he refused to take part in the creation of the "Super Bug." He said that doctors who were over-prescribing antibiotics would be responsible for the dreaded Super Bug.

 

It was New Year's Eve of that year, after I had seen my GP four times, that I spiked a high fever and could barely walk. My husband rushed me to the ER. When I was finally seen many hours later, the doctor asked me how long I had been sick. I told her that it had been about three months and I had complained to my doctor four times.

 

The doctor told me that I had walking pneumonia, and she put me on some very strong antibiotics. I improved within a few days.

 

Changed Doctors

 

I did find a different doctor. Although I understood the old doctor's rationale about over-prescribing antibiotics and how that could lead to creating a super bug, I was also concerned that I might somehow become very sick and need help.

 

Urinary tract infections run in my family. My mother had them frequently; and sadly, so did I when I reached my teens. If the reader has had these infections, they know the pain that comes with them - it's horrible.

 

An untreated UTI can also lead to sepsis which can be fatal. My husband was very ill years ago, and we had to go to the ER one evening. They finally realized that he had sepsis from a urinary tract infection. They administered antibiotics intravenously. He was able to come home the next day.

 

The Dreaded Super Bug

 

Today, as I read the news, I noticed one of the top articles was about a Super Bug which has been shrouded in secrecy for the last few years by the CDC. I imagine that they chose to err on the side of caution (and not truth) for fear that the public would panic. Now, the cat is out of the bag.

 

From MSM.com

 

Last May, an elderly man was admitted to the Brooklyn branch of Mount Sinai Hospital for abdominal surgery. A blood test revealed that he was infected with a newly discovered germ as deadly as it was mysterious.

 

Doctors swiftly isolated him in the intensive care unit. The germ, a fungus called Candida auris, preys on people with weakened immune systems, and it is quietly spreading across the globe.

 

Over the last five years, it has hit a neonatal unit in Venezuela, swept through a hospital in Spain, forced a prestigious British medical center to shut down its intensive care unit, and taken root in India, Pakistan and South Africa.

 

Recently C. auris reached New York , New Jersey and Illinois, leading the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add it to a list of germs deemed "urgent threats."

 

The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.

 

"Everything was positive - the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump," said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital's president. "The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive."

 

auris is so tenacious, in part, because it is impervious to major antifungal medications, making it a new example of one of the world's most intractable health threats: the rise of drug-resistant infections.

 

For decades, public health experts have warned that the overuse of antibiotics was reducing the effectiveness of drugs that have lengthened life spans by curing bacterial infections once commonly fatal. But lately, there has been an explosion of resistant fungi as well, adding a new and frightening dimension to a phenomenon that is undermining a pillar of modern medicine.

 

"It's an enormous problem," said Matthew Fisher, a professor of fungal epidemiology at Imperial College London, who was a co-author of a recent scientific review on the rise of resistant fungi. "We depend on being able to treat those patients with antifungals."

 

Simply put, fungi, just like bacteria, are evolving defenses to survive modern medicines.

 

Yet, even as world health leaders have pleaded for more restraint in prescribing antimicrobial drugs to combat bacteria and fungi - convening the United Nations General Assembly in 2016 to manage an emerging crisis - gluttonous overuse of them in hospitals, clinics and farming has continued.

 

Resistant germs are often called "superbugs," but this is simplistic because they don't typically kill everyone. Instead, they are most lethal to people with immature or compromised immune systems, including newborns and the elderly, smokers, diabetics and people with autoimmune disorders who take steroids that suppress the body's defenses.

 

Scientists say that unless more effective new medicines are developed and unnecessary use of antimicrobial drugs is sharply curbed, risk will spread to healthier populations. A study the British government funded projects that if policies are not put in place to slow the rise of drug resistance, 10 million people could die worldwide of all such infections in 2050, eclipsing the eight million expected to die that year from cancer.

 

In the United States, two million people contract resistant infections annually, and 23,000 die from them, according to the official C.D.C. estimate. That number was based on 2010 figures; more recent estimates from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine put the death toll at 162,000. Worldwide fatalities from resistant infections are estimated at 700,000.

 

Antibiotics and antifungals are both essential to combat infections in people, but antibiotics are also used widely to prevent disease in farm animals, and antifungals are also applied to prevent agricultural plants from rotting. Some scientists cite evidence that rampant use of fungicides on crops is contributing to the surge in drug-resistant fungi infecting humans.

 

Yet, as the problem grows, it is little understood by the public - in part because the very existence of resistant infections is often cloaked in secrecy.

 

With bacteria and fungi alike, hospitals and local governments are reluctant to disclose outbreaks for fear of being seen as infection hubs. Even the C.D.C., under its agreement with states, is not allowed to make public the location or name of hospitals involved in outbreaks. State governments have in many cases declined to publicly share information beyond acknowledging that they have had cases.

 

All the while, the germs are easily spread - carried on hands and equipment inside hospitals; ferried on meat and manure-fertilized vegetables from farms; transported across borders by travelers and on exports and imports; and transferred by patients from nursing home to hospital and back.

 

auris, which infected the man at Mount Sinai, is one of dozens of dangerous bacteria and fungi that have developed resistance. Yet, like most of them, it is a threat that is virtually unknown to the public.

 

Other prominent strains of the fungus Candida - one of the most common causes of bloodstream infections in hospitals - have not developed significant resistance to drugs, but more than 90 percent of C. auris infections are resistant to at least one drug, and 30 percent are resistant to two or more drugs, the C.D.C. said.

 

Dr. Lynn Sosa, Connecticut's deputy state epidemiologist, said she now saw C. auris as "the top" threat among resistant infections. "It's pretty much unbeatable and difficult to identity," she said.

 

Nearly half of patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days, according to the C.D.C. Yet, the world's experts have not nailed down where it came from in the first place.

 

"It is a creature from the black lagoon," said Dr. Tom Chiller, who heads the fungal branch at the C.D.C., which is spearheading a global detective effort to find treatments and stop the spread. "It bubbled up and now it is everywhere."

 

'No need' to tell the public

 

In late 2015, Dr. Johanna Rhodes, an infectious disease expert at Imperial College London, got a panicked call from the Royal Brompton Hospital, a British medical center outside London. C. auris had taken root there months earlier, and the hospital couldn't clear it.

 

"We have no idea where it's coming from. We've never heard of it. It's just spread like wildfire," Dr. Rhodes said she was told. She agreed to help the hospital identify the fungus's genetic profile and clean it from rooms.

 

Under her direction, hospital workers used a special device to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide around a room used for a patient with C. auris, the theory being that the vapor would scour each nook and cranny. They left the device going for a week. Then they put a "settle plate" in the middle of the room with a gel at the bottom that would serve as a place for any surviving microbes to grow, Dr. Rhodes said.

 

Only one organism grew back. C. auris.

 

It was spreading, but word of it was not. The hospital, a specialty lung and heart center that draws wealthy patients from the Middle East and around Europe, alerted the British government and told infected patients, but made no public announcement.

 

"There was no need to put out a news release during the outbreak," said Oliver Wilkinson, a spokesman for the hospital.

 

This hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients - or prospective ones.

 

Dr. Silke Schelenz, Royal Brompton's infectious disease specialist, found the lack of urgency from the government and hospital in the early stages of the outbreak "very, very frustrating."

 

"They obviously didn't want to lose reputation," Dr. Schelenz said. "It hadn't impacted our surgical outcomes."

 

By the end of June 2016, a scientific paper reported "an ongoing outbreak of 50 C. auris cases" at Royal Brompton, and the hospital took an extraordinary step: It shut down its I.C.U. for 11 days, moving intensive care patients to another floor, again with no announcement.

 

Days later, the hospital finally acknowledged to a newspaper that it had a problem. A headline in The Daily Telegraph warned, "Intensive Care Unit Closed After Deadly New Superbug Emerges in the U.K." (Later research said there were eventually 72 total cases, though some patients were only carriers and were not infected by the fungus.)

 

Yet the issue remained little known internationally, while an even bigger outbreak had begun in Valencia, Spain, at the 992-bed Hospital Universitari i Politècnic La Fe. There, unbeknown to the public or unaffected patients, 372 people were colonized - meaning they had the germ on their body but were not sick with it - and 85 developed bloodstream infections. A paper in the journal Mycoses reported that 41 percent of the infected patients died within 30 days.

 

A statement from the hospital said it was not necessarily C. auris that killed them. "It is very difficult to discern whether patients die from the pathogen or with it, since they are patients with many underlying diseases and in very serious general condition," the statement said.

 

As with Royal Brompton, the hospital in Spain did not make any public announcement. It still has not.

 

One author of the article in Mycoses, a doctor at the hospital, said in an email that the hospital did not want him to speak to journalists because it "is concerned about the public image of the hospital."

 

The secrecy infuriates patient advocates, who say people have a right to know if there is an outbreak so they can decide whether to go to a hospital, particularly when dealing with a nonurgent matter, like elective surgery.

 

"Why the heck are we reading about an outbreak almost a year and a half later - and not have it front-page news the day after it happens?" said Dr. Kevin Kavanagh, a physician in Kentucky and board chairman of Health Watch USA , a nonprofit patient advocacy group. "You wouldn't tolerate this at a restaurant with a food poisoning outbreak."

 

Health officials say that disclosing outbreaks frightens patients about a situation they can do nothing about, particularly when the risks are unclear.

 

"It's hard enough with these organisms for health care providers to wrap their heads around it," said Dr. Anna Yaffee, a former C.D.C. outbreak investigator who dealt with resistant infection outbreaks in Kentucky in which the hospitals were not publicly disclosed. "It's really impossible to message to the public."

 

Officials in London did alert the C.D.C. to the Royal Brompton outbreak while it was occurring. And the C.D.C. realized it needed to get the word to American hospitals. On June 24, 2016, the C.D.C. blasted a nationwide warning to hospitals and medical groups and set up an email address, candidaauris@cdc.gov, to field queries. Dr. Snigdha Vallabhaneni, a key member of the fungal team, expected to get a trickle - "maybe a message every month."

 

Instead, within weeks, her inbox exploded.

 

Coming to America

 

In the United States, 587 cases of people having contracted C. auris have been reported, concentrated with 309 in New York, 104 in New Jersey and 144 in Illinois, according to the C.D.C.

 

The symptoms - fever, aches and fatigue - are seemingly ordinary, but when a person gets infected, particularly someone already unhealthy, such commonplace symptoms can be fatal.

 

The earliest known case in the United States involved a woman who arrived at a New York hospital on May 6, 2013, seeking care for respiratory failure. She was 61 and from the United Arab Emirates, and she died a week later after testing positive for the fungus. At the time, the hospital hadn't thought much of it, but three years later, it sent the case to the C.D.C. after reading the agency's June 2016 advisory.

 

This woman probably was not America's first C. auris patient. She carried a strain different from the South Asian one most common here. It killed a 56-year-old American woman who had traveled to India in March 2017 for elective abdominal surgery; she contracted C. auris and was airlifted back to a hospital in Connecticut that officials will not identify. She was later transferred to a Texas hospital, where she died.

 

The germ has spread into long-term care facilities. In Chicago, 50 percent of the residents at some nursing homes have tested positive for it, the C.D.C. has reported. The fungus can grow on intravenous lines and ventilators.

 

Workers who care for patients infected with C. auris worry for their own safety. Dr. Matthew McCarthy, who has treated several C. auris patients at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, described experiencing an unusual fear when treating a 30-year-old man.

 

"I found myself not wanting to touch the guy," he said. "I didn't want to take it from the guy and bring it to someone else." He did his job and thoroughly examined the patient, but said, "There was an overwhelming feeling of being terrified of accidentally picking it up on a sock or tie or gown."

 

The role of pesticides?

 

As the C.D.C. works to limit the spread of drug-resistant C. auris, its investigators have been trying to answer the vexing question: Where in the world did it come from?

 

The first time doctors encountered C. auris was in the ear of a woman in Japan in 2009 (auris is Latin for ear). It seemed innocuous at the time, a cousin of common, easily treated fungal infections.

 

Three years later, it appeared in an unusual test result in the lab of Dr. Jacques Meis , a microbiologist in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who was analyzing a bloodstream infection in 18 patients from four hospitals in India. Soon, new clusters of C. auris seemed to emerge with each passing month in different parts of the world.

 

The C.D.C. investigators theorized that C. auris started in Asia and spread across the globe. But when the agency compared the entire genome of auris samples from India and Pakistan, Venezuela, South Africa and Japan, it found that its origin was not a single place, and there was not a single auris strain.

 

The genome sequencing showed that there were four distinctive versions of the fungus, with differences so profound that they suggested that these strains had diverged thousands of years ago and emerged as resistant pathogens from harmless environmental strains in four different places at the same time.

 

"Somehow, it made a jump almost seemingly simultaneously, and seemed to spread, and it is drug resistant which is really mind-boggling," Dr. Vallabhaneni said.

 

There are different theories as to what happened with C. auris. Dr. Meis, the Dutch researcher, said he believed that drug-resistant fungi were developing thanks to heavy use of fungicides on crops.

 

Dr. Meis became intrigued by resistant fungi when he heard about the case of a 63-year-old patient in the Netherlands who died in 2005 from a fungus called Aspergillus. It proved resistant to a front-line antifungal treatment called itraconazole. That drug is a virtual copy of the azole pesticides that are used to dust crops the world over and accounts for more than one-third of all fungicide sales.

 

A 2013 paper in Plos Pathogens said that it appeared to be no coincidence that drug-resistant Aspergillus was showing up in the environment where the azole fungicides were used. The fungus appeared in 12 percent of Dutch soil samples, for example, but also in "flower beds, compost, leaves, plant seeds, soil samples of tea gardens, paddy fields, hospital surroundings, and aerial samples of hospitals."

 

Dr. Meis visited the C.D.C. last summer to share research and theorize that the same thing is happening with C. auris, which is also found in the soil: Azoles have created an environment so hostile that the fungi are evolving, with resistant strains surviving.

 

This is similar to concerns that resistant bacteria are growing because of excessive use of antibiotics in livestock for health and growth promotion. As with antibiotics in farm animals, azoles are used widely on crops.

 

"On everything - potatoes, beans, wheat, anything you can think of, tomatoes, onions," said Dr. Rhodes, the infectious disease specialist who worked on the London outbreak. "We are driving this with the use of antifungicides on crops."

 

Dr. Chiller theorizes that C. auris may have benefited from the heavy use of fungicides. His idea is that C. auris actually has existed for thousands of years, hidden in the world's crevices, a not particularly aggressive bug. But as azoles began destroying more prevalent fungi, an opportunity arrived for C. auris to enter the breach, a germ that had the ability to readily resist fungicides now suitable for a world in which fungi less able to resist are under attack.

 

The mystery of C. auris's emergence remains unsolved, and its origin seems, for the moment, to be less important than stopping its spread.

 

Resistance and denial

 

For now, the uncertainty around C. auris has led to a climate of fear, and sometimes denial.

 

Last spring, Jasmine Cutler, 29, went to visit her 72-year-old father at a hospital in New York City, where he had been admitted because of complications from a surgery the previous month.

 

When she arrived at his room, she discovered that he had been sitting for at least an hour in a recliner, in his own feces, because no one had come when he had called for help to use the bathroom. Ms. Cutler said it became clear to her that the staff was afraid to touch him because a test had shown that he was carrying C. auris.

 

"I saw doctors and nurses looking in the window of his room," she said. "My father's not a guinea pig. You're not going to treat him like a freak at a show."

 

He was eventually discharged and told he no longer carried the fungus. But he declined to be named, saying he feared being associated with the frightening infection.

 

No Need to Tell the Public??

 

Well, the CDC has finally come out about Candida Auris:

 

CDC on Candida Auris   <click here to read CDC on Candida Auris

 

I believe that a health crisis such as this should most definitely be told to the public. I believe that people should have all of the facts, especially if they are going into the hospital for something that is not a life- saving measure. They should have all information so that they can make an informed decision.

 

Brethren, this is quite alarming. The elderly man who died left his hospital room with C. Auris on EVERY surface - including the ceiling!!

 

Could our Lord use this in the Tribulation period?

 

We can only speculate. But something of this magnitude which continues to spread cannot be ruled out as a way that human population may be drastically reduced in the near future!

 

"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places" (Matthew 24:7).

 

God knew of Candida auris before the foundations of the earth were laid. NOTHING surprises Him!

 

As His children, we must trust Him. We should also be given the facts about a germ which doctors do not know how to treat or control - a deadly germ that is spreading across the globe.

 

How Can I Be Saved?

 

Shalom b'Yeshua

 

 

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